Amish Litigation

Amish litigation grows in significance as the Christian denomination doubles in size in the United States every 20 years, and defends religious freedom with a 300-year-old faithful tradition. The precedents in these cases affect the rights of all religious persons.

Mast v. Fillmore County[edit]

In Mast v. Fillmore County (Sup. Ct. 2021), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held in favor of the Old Order Amish and vacated a Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling that had ordered the Amish community to install cumbersome machinery to handle gray water discharged from washing clothes and dishes. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) was central to this Amish victory.

The litigation continues in the trial court on remand.^[1]

Adams County, Indiana[edit]

In April 2021, Old Order Amish families in a large community in Adams County, Indiana, felt compelled to sue their county to block its orders for everyone to hook up to the county's electric sewer system.^[2] This lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Northern District of Indiana.

Fort Scott, Kansas[edit]

Though not in litigation yet, an new Amish settlement that began in 2015 near Fort Scott, Kansas, has grown to 25 families and local Bourbon County officials object to the traditional Amish practice of distributing human waste from outhouses to the fields as fertilizer for crops, rather than using expensive electricity-dependent machinery for disposing of the waste.^[3]

References[edit]