Assembly Bill A1358 (DiPietro-R) and Senate Bill S266 (Gallivan-R) would restore the religious exemption for pre-school and K-12 students in New York that was eliminated by the Democrats when they finally got control of the Governorship and both legislative houses in 2019 and threw 27,00 children out of school. .
One thing that should be clear to everyone is that the disastrously bad performance by Governors Cuomo and Hochul, and New York City Mayors di Blasio and Adams, the public health authorities, and public officials in New York in response to COVID should preclude them from making healthcare decisions for individuals and our children ever again. They should never be allowed to mandate a medical procedure for anyone. We can begin to undo the damage by passing A1358/S266.
We need as many members of both houses as possible to co-sponsor these bills by Asm. David DiPietro and Sen. Patrick Gallivan. We need to know exactly where all the legislators stand on this bill.
Take Action
Please use the panel on the right to send a message to your State Senator and Assemblymember expressing your support for A1358/S266 and asking them to co-sponsor the bill.
Please contact your State Senator and Assemblymember and ask them to co-sponsor A1358/S266. Currently, A6676 has one co-sponsor in the Assembly. S118 is co-sponsored by Senators Ashby, Borello, Mattera, Murray, Rhoads and Weik. We need to get as many co-sponsors as possible.
You can look up your Senator’s and Assemblymember’s names and contact information here:
https://www.nysenate.gov/find-my-senator
https://www.nyassembly.gov/mem/search/
Talking Points
Proponents of the 2019 repeal of the religious exmption from vaccine mandates to attend school in New York like to pretend it was about public health and herd immunity. It was never about that. Only one half of one percent of students in New York had religious exemptions in 2019, which is 1/10th to 1/20th of the rate purported to have an impact on herd immunity. They never could, and still cannot, provide a single incident of a child with an exemption in New York causing an outbreak. And there are no studies showing better health outcomes in states without religious exemptions. The science is just not there. Repealing the religious exemption was about money, ideology and power not public health.
T\In 2019 the New York Democrats (plus a few Republicans) followed the lead of California, making New York one of only 6 (now 4) states that do not allow religious exemptions from vaccine mandates to attend school for religious, philosophical, or other reasons of conscience. Up until California repealed their religious exemption in 2016, the only states that did not have religious exemptions were West Virginia and Mississippi. But then the Democrats discovered that doing whatever the vaccine industry wanted was the ticket to a steady flow of pharma money, so, all of a sudden, Mississippi became the model for enlightened public health policy and Constitutional rights.
A federal court in 2023 found that Mississippi violated the first amendment rights of Mississippians by not allowing religious exemptions. The Court ordered Mississippi to provide exemptions by July of this year for the first time in 45 years. Similar lawsuits have been filed in New York and other states. This January, on his first day in office, newly elected West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order requiring a religious and moral exemption. Currently, in addition to New York, the only other states without exemptions for religion or conscience are Maine, Connecticut, and California, and all those states allowed religious exemptions prior to 2015.
Bucking this positive trend was a powerful, but ultimately failed, push by Hawaii's Governor Josh Green to eliminate that state's religious exemption. And a very vigorous current effort in Massachusetts to repeal their religious exemption.
We also saw during COVID that the most powerful institutions: the New York State Government, legislators, New York City, big corporations, unions, especially public employee unions, have complete contempt for the consciences of individuals, especially if an individual’s choice could be labeled as “religious.”
One thing that COVID showed us is that personal healthcare decisions are far too important to be left to politicians, bureaucrats, physicians, medical service conglomerates, insurance companies, or employers. Each of those groups have completely different sets of priorities and incentives and are far too compromised to be entrusted with making medical decisions for individuals or their children. And, as we have seen in abundance, the decisionmaker never suffers any consequences when vaccine decisions go wrong, as they so often do. Only the individual or child who is subject to the decisions by powerful, frequently indifferent, sometimes malevolent institutions, suffers the consequences.
Ultimately, we have to eliminate government mandates. COVID taught anyone who is not ideologically brainwashed, or stupid, that government cannot be trusted to make these decisions. Until we can achieve that ultimate goal, at the very least, we must restore the minimal First Amendment rights we once had in New York, and are enjoyed in 46 other states
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