Vaccine exemptions are a necessary part of religious toleration

New York's crackdown is a dangerous targeting of the state's Orthodox Jewish communities

Andrew Cuomo.

Likely to be lost amid all the liberal preening about the mandatory vaccination bill signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week is the fact that, during the period covered by the so-called "epidemic," not a single person has died from a confirmed case of measles in the state of New York. The sun and moon have not dropped from the sky and the red-splotched corpses of thousands of victims do not litter the streets of Brooklyn.

Nor are they likely to do so. Everyone involved knows this. The new law is legislation of the very worst kind — passed in a fit of self-aggrandizing indignation and meant to affect a single group of people who are all but named. I am referring to the minority of Orthodox Jews in New York who have refused to vaccinate their children and whose objections were, until last week, granted specific legal protection. This is not a question of so-called "association" or "public accommodations." No one is demanding the right to send unvaccinated children to public schools, nor are the post-faith bobos of today's Williamsburg likely to send their own children, if they have any, to receive an Orthodox education. The new law is about power and control for their own sake.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.