Second Circuit Doubts Amish Bid for NY School Vaccine Exemption

A federal appeals panel in New York seemed skeptical the state’s vaccine mandate for schoolchildren showed religious hostility, particularly toward the Amish, but one judge suggested multiple times that the case could be sent back down.

Judge José Cabranes of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said it’s not clear whether the state legislature showed hostile intent when it repealed the religious exemption—but not the medical exemption—from the state’s mandatory vaccination law in 2019, as part of an effort to boost immunization rates following a major measles outbreak.

Cabranes said there’s “enough ambiguity” for the case to ...