January 8,2015 The District Court granted the state summary judgment, and the 2nd Circuit affirmed that finding Wednesday, citing Prince v. Massachusetts, a 1944 decision by the Supreme Court.
This case holds that a parent “cannot claim freedom from compulsory vaccination for the child more than for himself on religious grounds. The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death,'” the ruling states.
     A law requiring the vaccination of all children to attend public school, regardless of religious beliefs, would be constitutional, the court found.

Dina Check, the plaintiff who challenged the New York law at issue on the basis of her Catholic beliefs, testified that medical treatment should be “strictly by the word of God,” and that vaccines could hurt her daughter.
A federal magistrate in Brooklyn denied Check’s daughter an exemption, however, citing “compelling evidence that plaintiff’s refusal to immunize her child is based on medical considerations and not religious beliefs.”
The judge pointed to Check’s own “testimony that she did not adopt her views opposing vaccination until she believed that immunization jeopardized her daughter’s health.” Read more..

VLA Comment:  A DANGEROUS DECISION:  WE MUST MAINTAIN RELIGIOUS WAIVERS!

​ …Eileen Dannemann

Warning: Do not double speak (for now)!  Being religious does not mean you have no brain.  Certainly a religious person can hold a deep seated belief in the Divine manifestation of the human life form and simultaneously determine via research that vaccines will likely put her child at risk.  One would also think that it would be against any religious belief that if a parent intellectually determines that the child would be endangered by vaccination, it would go against her religious belief and conscience if she went ahead and applied a medical treatment that she believed would harm her child. I wonder why they did not argue that!  And although she may not have adopted her religious belief until after she became aware of the dangers of vaccines that does not preclude a later epiphany…like a visit from Michael the Arc Angel or Jesus.  Who can argue with that or say that the Divine visit didn’t happen?  This New York court is bought!

UPDATE FEB. 3, 2015:  HUFFINGTON POST: Just a few weeks ago, a federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit against New York’s vaccination law on the very same grounds — and issued its decision unanimously just two days after hearing oral arguments, calling the requirement “clearly constitutional.”