Religous Vaccine Exemption Inquisition Tribunals in Liberal Ithaca New York

As we witness the frenzied and hysterical protests nationwide against President Trump's nomination for the Supreme Court, we should note that the primary motivating factor is the fear that the right of reproductive choice or more accurately the right of a woman to choose to kill  her  unborn child in her womb will be abrogated. It would be hoped that those taking the pro choice view when it comes to the abortion debate will at least demonstrate consistency and be just as vocal when it comes to the question of vaccination choice and the inherent liberty and autonomy that we should have over our bodies and the bodies of our children from government and bureaucratic intrusion. At the same time those who take the view in the vaccination debate that the government should dictate what is appropriate for your child, should be consistent and defend the welfare of the unborn child with the same vigor and fervor, from irresponsible parents who want to endanger their unborn children by aborting them. It is my expectation that the two great lovers of children, Dr Richard Pan and Dr Paul Offit will be in the forefront of defending the rights of the unborn child. I hope that Dr Pan will include the unborn child in the California Child Bill of Rights that he is pushing. For those of you out there who appreciate my sarcasm, I thank you.         

The Article and quotes below are courtesy of the Autism Action Network

Excellent article on vaccine inquisition in Ithaca

School district targets families who can't afford lawyers

The Tompkins Weekly just published an excellent article on the ongoing inquisition (there really is no other word to describe it) by the Ithaca Central School District against families that attempt to exercise their right to a religious exemption from vaccine mandates to attend school. Families that cannot afford a lawyer are bearing the brunt of this injustice. Any school district could begin a similar inquisition at anytime.     Here is the article:

ICSD vaccine policy impacting local families  

Posted on July 9, 2018 in News

By Pete Angie
Tompkins Weekly
 The Ithaca City School District has made a seemingly significant change to its protocol for handling religious exemptions to vaccinations for students of the district. New York State Public Health Law requires that students attending schools in New York be vaccinated unless their parent or caretaker holds religious beliefs contrary to vaccinations. Parents and caretakers with such beliefs were simply required in the past to submit a letter to ICSD stating their objection, which is similar to the standard practice in most schools across the state. Last year, however, parents seeking an exemption, and some of those who had already received one, started seeing a change.
According to the ICSD Immunization Exemption Committee Protocol, past processes for reviewing exemptions “was insufficiently robust and resulted in religious exemptions being granted based purely on parent request. This laxity resulted in the district granting exemptions that were not reviewed in the manner required by New York State Education Law and our Board of Education policy. Both the law and our ICSD policy require, prior to granting a religious exemption, that school officials determine that (a) a parent’s opposition to vaccination is religious, and (b) that belief is sincerely and genuinely held.”
Local resident June Smith (who asked to be referred to under a pseudonym to avoid confrontation with the school) had sought an exemption for her student when she enrolled them in Dewitt Middle School late in the Fall of 2016, after returning from several months with family overseas. She completed a form and wrote a letter, and was told by the nurse that exemptions are usually accepted. Eight months later, in August 2017, she received a letter signed by three school principals which asked her to answer several questions and that her response needed to be received within a week. Her reply was met by one from the District that stated that her religious beliefs had been judged to not be sincerely held. “I was lost,” said Smith. “I didn’t know what to do.” The letter demanded that her student get the requested vaccines within one week, or they would be excluded from school. Smith was also told she had thirty days to appeal the decision, but she did not know how.
According to Smith, she met with her principal, Mac Knight, who told her his hands were tied in regard to the decision. She said she then met with the school registrar, Kathy Troy, who told her that if her daughter were out of school for over twenty-one days she could be reported to Child Protective Services. Smith only later learned that her daughter was being recorded as having unexcused absences during this time, and her grades were plummeting. Smith asked teachers for take-home work for her child, but no one responded to her requests. She said she called and emailed the school nurse, and made requests to meet with the three principals who had denied her exemption but received no responses.  Smith went to Albany with another parent whose child had been expelled from ICSD and attempted to meet with her representatives. She also spoke at the ICSD School Board meeting in December, all to no avail. “I feel like I’ve been ignored, totally ignored,” she said. Ultimately, she sent her child to live with their grandfather overseas in January 2018. Smith spoke with Tompkins Weekly from outside the country, where she had gone to retrieve her child. She will attempt to enroll her child in a different Ithaca-area school in the fall, and seek a religious exemption yet again.
Devon Buckley and her son Thane live within the Ithaca City School District and shared a similar experience. Thane had a religious exemption when he attended the Ithaca Waldorf School, and when he transferred to Boynton Middle School for the fall of 2017, Buckley was required to complete a new exemption form. The form was followed by a letter which asked for a written statement of her religious beliefs as they relate to vaccines and other documentation that supported her decision. Buckley later received a phone call from an ICSD principal, Mary Grover. Buckley said Grover asked her what she said felt like very invasive questions about her entire religious past, and about health care choices that did not appear related to vaccines. Weeks after the phone call, Buckley received a letter from ICSD stating that her religious exemption was denied, that her beliefs appeared to be philosophical and moral in nature, but not religious. The letter further stated that Thane needed to start receiving vaccinations the following Monday, or he would not be able to attend school any longer. Buckley was in shock. “I really didn’t think my kid could be kicked out of school,” she said. Buckley started homeschooling Thane and remains mystified by what she sees as religious discrimination at ICSD. “When you have an obscure religion…I don’t know how these people are qualified to understand my belief system and judge whether or not I’m being sincere.” Buckley also feels she and her son have been denied their rights because she did not hire an attorney. “If you have a lawyer your child can have no vaccines and be in school. If you don’t, you’re discriminated against.”
Sujata Gibson is a local attorney who has represented many families through the vaccine exemption process. “Privilege is everything,” Gibson said in a written statement to Tompkins Weekly. “Though there is no guarantee, thus far, everyone who came to me before responding was granted their exemption.”  Gibson sees the disparity between those granted exemptions and those denied them by ICSD as being rooted in a number of factors other than religion. “The majority of kids kicked out and denied are from low-income families, and often are students of color and kids of single parents, etc. Some of these families came to me after they were denied to try to get help. I saw no difference between them and the dozen or so families I represented who got their exemption. They were just as sincere and often shared very similar beliefs to those who were accepted. The difference was they couldn’t afford the time and money it took to articulate these beliefs to the tribunal in the short chance they got.”
Gibson has accompanied parents to several of the face-to-face meetings that ICSD has held to question parents about their religious opposition to vaccines. Gibson refers to these sessions as tribunals, wherein the school attorney asks questions in a manner that Gibson describes as aggressive and akin to cross-examination at a trial. She said parents have broken down in tears at every one that she has attended and she feels that the panel attempts to entrap parents through the same kind of seemingly arbitrary questions that Smith and Buckley described, and may find a parent’s beliefs insincere if they use sunscreen, or practice oral hygiene.  “It’s offensive,” Gibson said. No other state but New York allows this kind of questioning,Gibson said, adding that in New York, 85 percent of school districts only require the simple statement that ICSD used to require, and do not subject families to questioning. A growing number, however, are adopting systems similar to ICSD’s, according to Gibson and activist Rita Palma.
Rita Palma, of Bayport-Blue Point School District on Long Island, has been fighting to change New York’s system of religious exemption full time and said ICSD is now known as one of the most difficult school districts in the state to get a religious exemption accepted in. Her journey toward advocacy started years ago after her district denied her son’s exemption. She was questioned for hours by district staff on two occasions, and eventually gave up and drove to another state to receive homeopathic vaccinations. “I didn’t have the money to fight them,” she said and decided she would commit to change the law, instead of fighting it. Becoming active in 2008, Palma took calls from parents all over the state who were denied exemptions. She found that she spoke with many people with learning disabilities, and people for who English is not their first language, barriers that got in the way of communicating their beliefs effectively. In 2014 she sold her business and began lobbying full time, and recently has put her efforts behind bills in the State Senate and Assembly that would create a standard form to be used for religious exemptions, and “[t]akes away sincerity interviews, religious interrogation.” Palma said they pursued it as an education bill, instead of a health bill, because the issue at hand is about access to education.
Richard Gottfried of Manhattan is a co-sponsor of the Assembly bill that Palma supports, A8123B, and has represented New York’s 75th District for more than 40 years. He has been sponsoring legislation on this issue for a decade and was influenced by a video he saw of parents undergoing questioning. Unlike some supporters of a standard form for exemptions, Gottfried is pro-vaccine. “I come to this issue as someone who very profoundly believes in the public health benefits of vaccination,” he said. But, he added that he is also a strong advocate for free speech and free exercise of religion. “It just makes my blood boil that an American government official thinks he or she has the right to cross-examine an American about their religious beliefs and tell them they are wrong about their beliefs. I can’t imagine how that can go on in America.” Gottfried feels that education and advocacy about the benefits of vaccination are the tools that are most effective in maintaining public health. “It highlights the need for the medical profession, health departments and school systems to do a better job of educating and persuading parents,” he said. “It’s a balancing issue. Instead of trampling on people’s rights, we should be doing a better job of persuading people.”
In this debate, concerns exist that some people who cannot be persuaded will use the exemption insincerely, as a loophole. “My experience,” wrote Gibson, “representing all these families and speaking to many more, is that the majority of people who claim the religious exemption are sincere…The cost to our democracy of allowing school districts to become religious judges, or to force parents to justify and detail their private sacred religious beliefs to a tribunal is far greater than any potential to catch a few liars.” Gibson sees a grinding conflict between constitutional rights and the system ICSD has in place and is disturbed by the school board’s acceptance of the new process. “[T]hey seem to think it’s okay to violate the Constitution since they are doing it for a reason they feel is good. Such willingness to disregard fundamental constitutional protections even in this educated and liberal town is a frightening thing to witness.”  Gottfried also acknowledges the potential for some to misuse the exemption but sees maintaining people’s rights as a deeper issue. “Our whole system of liberty is a risk,” he explained. “If you guarantee a fair trial, some guilty people will go free… If you protect freedom of religion, some people will lie about religious beliefs. To me, that’s the price of a free society.”
Ithaca City School District superintendent Luvelle Brown did not respond to a request for statement on this story.