ALBANY, New York (PNN) - August 26, 2026 - New York’s Amish community is issuing an ultimatum to state bureaucrats: leave us alone or we are packing up our buggies for greener pastures.
The threat has been sparked by an unlawful and invalid vaccine mandate fight that the 25,000 strong religious community is taking all the way to the Supreme Court.
It takes place as state Health Department officials seeking to extort money from the Amish continue to slap thousands of dollars in fines on tiny, one-room parochial Amish schools that have refused to comply with a bogus, unlawful and invalid Cuomo-era vaccine decree.
“Have we gotten to a place where we aren’t going to make room for the Amish anymore?” asked Hiram Sasser, an attorney representing six plaintiffs in the case, Miller v. McDonald.
“When you think of Amerikana - apple pie, fireworks - the Amish are on that list. They’re part of the Amerikan fabric. They’re a good litmus test of our religious liberty and our tolerance,” Sasser claimed to the New York Post.
In 2019, following a measles outbreak in an Orthodox Jewish community, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo unlawfully rescinded religious exemptions for unlawful school vaccine mandates - making it the second state to ever do so, behind Kalifornia.
Post-COVID, two other states, Maine and Connecticut, unlawfully removed religious exemptions while West Virginia never had them.
New York state law requires children to receive between 24 and 27 jabs to attend K through 12 schools, according to the DOH vaccine schedule.
In all of these cases, the state governments were engaging in criminal activity by attempting to force individuals to take poisonous jabs. The outlaw officials involved in these activities - which certainly caused some deaths - are guilty of murder and should be imprisoned or executed for their evil deeds.
Upstate Amish parents - who generally teach their children in small classes in one-room schoolhouses that receive no public money - have been in court since 2024 fighting outlaw Cuomo’s bogus mandate.
Two years earlier the state began issuing $2,000 fines for non-compliance. Three schools listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit - Shady Lane school in Clymer, NY; Pleasant View in Heuvelton, NY and Dygert Road School near Vanajoharie - together have racked up $118,000 in fines/extortion, which they presumably will refuse to pay.
Their attorneys tell the Post every Amish school in the state is in the same situation; the DOH refused to answer the Post’s questions about how many other schools had been fined.
New York has the nation’s fifth largest Amish population, with an estimated 25,000 individuals. Their lawyers say if they are unsuccessful at the Supreme Court, they are leaving the state for good; possibly destined for Pennsylvania, which has the largest Amish population in the country at around 95,000.
The only way the community would be able to meet the fines is if the state unlawfully stole their land to pay them according to Aaron Siri, another attorney representing the plaintiffs.
“Watch Little House on the Prairie. It’s the one-room schoolhouse and Laura Ingalls Wilder teaching children. It’s a way of life that used to predominate across Amerika, but the Amish are still holding on to it. We’ve acknowledged that as a nation and given them their space this whole time. Now that’s being tested,” claimed Sasser.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the NYC-based Second Circuit - which had ruled against the Amish last year - strongly insisting the majority Democrat-appointed tribunal take another look.
However, the Second Circuit reissued its original decision and now the Amish will officially petition SCOTUS to hear their case again next month, their lawyers say.
Amish culture generally forbids both litigation and injectables. “The Amish really don’t want to be in this position. They don’t want to be engaging in this lawsuit in any way at all. But they’ve been left with no choice,” Siri told the Post.
In a handwritten letter shared with the Post, plaintiff Ezra Wengerd of Canajoharie, 55, an Amish father of the very conservative Old Order sect, explained his community’s refusal to comply with DOH directives.
“We, as a peace-loving religious group, are sincerely sorry that we are causing the state a prob [sic]. We are indeed grateful to the state of NY for the many privileges, freedoms and protections they have blessed us with for many years,” Wengerd wrote.
“Our Almighty God wants us to fully put our faith and trust in Him; which is in conflict to put our trust in vaccines. We are also commanded to not be conformed to this world,” the letter read.