Posted on 07/21/2008 5:20:06 PM PDT by SJackson
Collision might be due to growth in municipalities not accustomed to lifestyle
Among the 600,000-plus hunters heading out for last year’s gun-deer season were three Clark County brothers who were cited for not wearing blaze orange — clothing, they said, that was against their Amish religion.
Members of the religious sect noted for their black felt hats, dark trousers, long dresses and bonnets are barred from wearing bright clothing.
But a Clark County judge ruled last month that there’s nothing in the Amish religion that compels them to hunt deer. So each brother was fined $143.10.
It was the latest in a growing number of clashes between the Amish and governments in Wisconsin:
• An Amish man in Jackson County was fined $10,000 in March for failing to get a building permit. He was part of a small group of Amish farmers who did not get building permits because they say conforming to the state’s uniform dwelling code is against their beliefs.
• An Amish couple in Clark County was ordered last month to shut down their candy and jam business because they were running an unlicensed food processing establishment.
• A refusal by some Amish farmers to comply with the state’s livestock premises registration law — designed to quickly locate livestock herds in a disease outbreak — could lead to a showdown in court. Some Amish fear that if they register their farms, it could lead to the state requiring them to register their animals individually. They say that would be akin to “the number of the beast” in the Book of Revelation.
The culture collision might be due to the growth of Amish in places where municipalities are not accustomed to the group’s simple lifestyle that shuns electricity, phones and motor vehicles.
“Where the rub and irritation comes is when they move into new areas and the local officials don’t know how to relate to them and there’s no history of collaboration,” said Donald Kraybill, an Amish expert at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. “That might be happening in some places in Wisconsin because of the rapid increase and influx.”
Though there’s no comprehensive census of the Amish, Kraybill has tracked populations in states including Wisconsin by counting the number of settlements and church districts. According to his research, Wisconsin had 27 separate Amish settlements, 53 church districts and an estimated 7,150 adults and children in 1992.
In 2008, the figures had grown to 50 settlements, 115 church districts and 15,525 people.
The vast majority of Amish co-exist easily with non-Amish. Many move to Wisconsin in search of good farmland at relatively inexpensive prices.
But sometimes their wish for relative isolation collides with state and municipal regulations.
In November, Jacob J. Gingerich, 22, Aaron J. Gingerich, 17, and Herman Gingerich, 21, were cited for hunting deer on their family’s land near Loyal without wearing blaze orange clothing.
Their father, Jacob M. Gingerich, testified in Clark County Circuit Court that his family didn’t want to change the law but hoped for a compromise that would allow them to hunt on their property without having to wear the bright clothing designed to protect hunters from being mistaken for deer. He also said if they were forced to wear blaze orange, they wouldn’t hunt deer during the firearms season.
“We were hoping we could be exempted on our own place . . . our own land,” Jacob M. Gingerich told Judge Jon Counsell.
But a prosecutor pointed to statistics showing that a majority of firearm accidents during Wisconsin’s gun-deer season involved hunters in the same hunting party and most happened on private land.
“The orange clothing requirement is not an unconstitutional burden on defendants’ exercise of their religion,” Counsell wrote in his June 24 decision. He also noted that “nothing in the defendants’ religion compels them to hunt deer and hunting deer is not central to the Amish way of life.”
Darwin Zwieg has been district attorney for almost three decades in Clark County, which has a large Amish population. This was the first case he could recall involving Amish deer hunters claiming that wearing blaze orange was against their religious beliefs.
“Overall, they do their best to comply as long as it doesn’t interfere with what they believe to be their free exercise of their religion,” Zwieg said.
It was also in Clark County where Jonas and Katie Gingerich of Willard were ordered last month to stop making jam and candy they sold via mail order because they were operating a food-processing plant without a license, didn’t put required notices on candy that contained nuts and used an unapproved waste water disposal system.
In Jackson County, three cases are pending in the Town of Albion near Black River Falls involving Amish who did not get required building permits. In March, Daniel Borntreger, an Amish farmer who lives in the nearby Town of Franklin, was fined $10,600 for failing to get a permit before adding on to a building.
The pending cases involve Amish who claim it’s a violation of their religious faith to get a building permit, said Paul Millis, the attorney for the towns of Franklin and Albion.
“By having to comply with the uniform dwelling code their argument is they would have to change their ways so they’re in conformity with the rest of society and that violates their religious faith,” Millis said.
Though disputes between some Amish and the state’s 2-year-old livestock premises registration rule have not gone to court, state agriculture officials are preparing cases to forward to district attorneys who will ultimately decide whether to file complaints.
After pseudorabies was discovered last year on two Clark County swine farms — one Amish and one non-Amish — state health inspectors had to contact every farm within a five-mile radius. But since only half of those farms had registered with the state, it took inspectors two days to drive up every road in the outbreak area and alert farmers, something that had could have done much quicker by phone if they all had been registered under the state law, assistant state veterinarian Paul McGraw said.
“We’ve had a lot of Amish that have registered their premises, and we have a lot who are resistant to it. My understanding is that they’re not opposed to premise registration,” McGraw said, “but they’ve drawing their toe in the sand because it could lead to individual animal registration, which to them is the ‘mark of the beast.’ ”
Though some recent cases have gone against Amish defendants, Wisconsin courts have been friendly to the Amish in the past. In 1996, the state Supreme Court ruled that Wisconsin courts should apply a least restrictive alternative test when considering claims that laws or regulations violate freedom of religion. Once someone proves they have a sincerely held religious belief and is burdened by a state law, the burden shifts to the state to prove that the law is based on a compelling state interest that cannot be served by a lesser alternative.
In that 1996 case, the state Supreme Court ruled that a state law requiring the Amish to display a red and orange triangular emblem on the back of their slow-moving, horse-drawn buggies violated their religious freedom. Eight Amish men in Clark County who were cited for driving their buggies without the brightly colored signs offered to use white reflective tape, which the Supreme Court determined was an acceptable alternative.
“The Amish are fortunate to be in a state (like Wisconsin) where they have the opportunity to make their case and the state has the burden to show a least restrictive alternative,” said Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, a nonpartisan group that studies free expression issues. “That’s a big protection for a religious group.”
bump for later
That would be true if the real definition of PROGRESSIVE were "progress for the individual". The reality is that PROGRESSIVE means "progress for the power of the state"...
the infowarrior
Oh, you made me google.
“Self-employed Amish do not pay Social Security tax. Those employed by non-Amish employers do pay Social Security tax. The Amish do pay real estate, state and federal income taxes, county taxes, sales tax, etc.
The Amish do not collect Social Security benefits, nor would they collect unemployment or welfare funds. Self sufficiency is the Amish community’s answer to government aid programs. Section 310 of the Medicare section of the Social Security act has a sub-section that permits individuals to apply for exemption from the self-employment tax if he is a member of a religious body that is conscientiously opposed to social security benefits but that makes reasonable provision of taking care of their own elderly or dependent members. The Amish have a long history of taking care of their own members. They do not have retirement communities or nursing homes; in most cases, each family takes care of their own, and the Amish community gives assistance as needed.”
I love it when people stand against over-bearing government. THe amish could teach most conservatives a lesson.
If enough conservatives told government "F@ck you" enough, maybe they would back off.
Amish! Oh yeah! They’re such bigtime violators down where my daughter lives that she went over to poppa black hat and informed him that the next time any of his young fellas were seen up in a tree on HER place she was going out with a chain saw and cut the tree down.
She also get really riled as to the way the kids treat their ponys. Always full tilt with a whole wagon load of kids and the poor pony all lathered and panting.
Seems to me, the Amish are smarter and more resilient than we are. We just allow every local, county, state and federal requirement, fee, tax, law, order, and other unnecessary rules to just stand without a fight.
God bless the Amish individuals who are fighting for our individual rights.
Ask The Obamanator.
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