ALBANY — An Albany judge has dismissed a lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of New York’s controversial new school vaccination requirements.

More than 50 families had filed the lawsuit in July, arguing that a newly enacted law eliminating religious exemptions to school vaccination rules was driven by religious hostility and violated their religious freedom rights under the U.S. Constitution.

But in a decision entered last week, Albany County Supreme Court Justice Denise Hartman said events leading up to the law's passage “all lead to the inexorable conclusion” that the repeal was driven by public health concerns, not religious animus.

The families, through attorneys Michael Sussman and prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had argued that an array of comments by individual legislators revealed a motive of hostility toward religion, such as one that called people’s professed religious rationale against vaccines “garbage” and another that called such individuals “selfish and misguided in their views of the science.”

“Here, the comments of some legislators, even if susceptible to inferences of discriminatory animus and even taking such inferences as true, would not transmute the collective decision of the New York State Legislature and governor to repeal the religious exemption from a neutral law of general applicability to one that targets religious beliefs,” Hartman wrote.

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Hartman said memoranda supporting the legislation and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s statement approving it, as well as the history of New York’s compulsory school vaccination mandates, made it clear the state was acting in the interest of public health.

New York enacted the law June 13 in response to a measles outbreak affecting New York City and several downstate counties. The outbreak, along with several others nationwide, almost caused the U.S. to lose its measles elimination status this year.

The legislation amended existing Public Health Law by striking a passage that exempted from school vaccination requirements students whose parents have “genuine and sincere” religious beliefs. It left in place a medical exemption for individuals whose doctors certify that immunization “may be detrimental to a child’s health.”

Of concern, lawmakers said, was what appeared to be a growing number of parents claiming religious exemptions at the same time that a growing anti-vaccine movement refuted the science behind vaccines.

The lawsuit, filed July 10, sought a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that would have prevented the law from taking effect while courts decide its underlying constitutionality. Those requests were denied.

Plaintiffs had also argued that the timing of the legislation’s passage — at the end of the legislative session in June — indicated it was not passed in the interest of public health but out of religious hostility since the measles outbreaks had occurred earlier in the year and were on the decline by then.

Hartman called the argument “unpersuasive,” adding that the Legislature addresses “many priorities each session.”

“The fact that the Legislature chose to address other priorities, such as the state budget, earlier in the same session does not detract from the public health objective of the proposed repeal legislation,” she wrote.

Another argument was that the state could have used less restrictive means to address a measles outbreak, such as temporarily excluding unvaccinated students from schools during an outbreak.

“While such measures may reduce dangers to unvaccinated individuals, they do not prevent or eliminate them,” Hartman wrote.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs did not respond to a request for comment. The plaintiffs themselves were identified only by their initials in the complaint.

Previous reporting:

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Second judge upholds New York's new school vaccination law

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