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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat’s True<\/p>\n
In 2022, New York fined three Amish schools for not complying with a law mandating schools only accept students with updated vaccines, following the 2019 removal of a religious exemption from that law. The small schools were fined $2,000 for every student without updated vaccines every day, for a total of $118,000 before the schools sued the state.<\/p>\n
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New York fined the schools, not the children.<\/p>\n
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The New York Department of Health did not clarify to Snopes whether it had fined any other schools or whether it had continued to fine the three schools since 2022. <\/p>\n
In early October, some social media posts claimed the state of New York had “declared war on the Amish” with vaccine requirements enforced by fines. Many Amish communities<\/a> have lower childhood vaccination rates<\/a> than the rest of the U.S. population, although vaccination is not universally rejected in these communities.<\/p>\n For example, one Facebook post<\/a> (archived<\/a>) claimed the state was fining each unvaccinated Amish child $2,000 per day. The post asserted that New York Democrats took away the religious exemption often used by Amish families to opt out of childhood vaccine requirements.<\/p>\n Users shared similar posts claiming New York Democrats were fining unvaccinated Amish children $2,000 each day on Instagram<\/a> (archived<\/a>) and X<\/a> (archived<\/a>). Snopes readers emailed us asking whether the rumor was true.<\/p>\n It’s true that New York fined at least three Amish schools $2,000 for each unvaccinated child it allowed to attend the school each day. New York did not fine the children themselves, and it’s unclear whether the state is still actively imposing fines on these schools or any other over their vaccination policies. Therefore, we’ve rated this claim a mixture of true and false information.<\/p>\n These details are outlined in a lawsuit, Miller v. McDonald<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the case, in 2019 New York repealed the religious exemption to its school immunization law \u2014 which applies to all public, private and religious schools in the state \u2014 after a measles outbreak in 2018 and 2019 centered around communities with clusters of unvaccinated people (PDF Page 3).<\/p>\n Democrats were the majority in both the state Senate and state Assembly in 2019<\/a>. The governor at the time was Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.<\/p>\n The immunization law<\/a> prohibits schools<\/a> from allowing children who do not have their scheduled vaccinations to attend the school until those vaccination requirements are met. New York audited three Amish schools’ compliance with the law in 2021, and in 2022 it fined the schools for allowing children to attend who did not meet the vaccine requirements (PDF Page 7).<\/p>\n A school is fined $2,000 for each violation of the law every day (PDF pages 7-8). Every attending student who does not meet vaccine requirements is considered a violation, which means the school is fined for each noncompliant student every day. Prior to imposing the fines, the state sent a letter to school administrators<\/a> warning it would impose the fines.<\/p>\n New York applied the fines under the assumption that two schools failed to comply for one day and acted as if there were only one noncompliant student attending for 10 days at the third school. That resulted in fines of $52,000 for 26 students at one school, $46,000 for 23 students at another school and $20,000 for one student at the third school, for a total of $118,000.<\/p>\n Notably, this amount was the total of the fines fines placed on the schools at the time the lawsuit was filed on June 2, 2023, the total fine referenced in the latest court decision on June 30 and the total fine referenced in social media posts as of this writing. A legal organization representing the Amish schools said they racked up $118,000 in total fines when announcing it would appeal<\/a> the latest ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 2.<\/p>\n Snopes reached out to the New York State Department of Health to ask whether the schools were still racking up fines or whether there have been other schools fined since the beginning of the lawsuit. The department did not elaborate on the fines. A spokesperson told Snopes via email:\u00a0<\/p>\n The state’s responsibility is to protect public health, keep New Yorkers and their families safe and enforce the law fairly and equitably. While we cannot comment on pending litigation, the Department is committed to eliminating serious illness and unnecessary deaths caused by vaccine preventable diseases. The Department continues to provide community outreach and education on the safety of immunizations. New York’s school immunization requirements are based in science and protect the health and well-being of all New Yorkers.<\/p>\n The lawsuit challenging this law, which does so on religious freedom grounds, has traveled up and down the court system. In 2025, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision<\/a> to side with New York over the plaintiffs (PDF Page 5<\/a>), but the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that decision and told the 2nd Circuit to reconsider the case in light of a different case the Supreme Court recently ruled on.\u00a0<\/p>\n After considering this other case, the 2nd Circuit did not change its decision in Miller v. McDonald. That was the June 30 decision that representatives for the Amish schools are appealing to the Supreme Court once again.<\/p>\n For further reading, Snopes previously fact-checked the claim that autism rates are nearly nonexistent among Amish children<\/a> because Amish people allegedly rarely get vaccinated.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t