Amish ready to roll if judgment goes against them

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | 4/11/02 | TOM GIBB

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

He was quick to admit that he didn't understand the legal turns that made a spate of traffic citations against his fellow Amishmen into a religious rights case.

But Sam Yoder barely paused Wednesday when asked what would happen if they lost the case.

"Then, as close as I can say, we'd have to go, we'd have to leave here," he said as he walked to his horse and buggy in a borough parking lot.

"Here" is Cambria County, where Yoder and members of his strict branch of Amishdom live and where police are citing them for refusing to place on their buggies the reflective orange triangles that state law mandates on slow-moving vehicles.

About 80 members of the sect, the Swartzentruber Amish, have moved to Cambria County over the past four years from Ohio, where they were granted an exception to the triangle rule.

Lawyers for the Swartzentrubers say in a legal brief that, unlike mainline Amish, the group regards the triangle as a garish violation of the biblical commandment to "place faith in God, not in symbols."

"They believe genuinely that God will take care of them ... and if something happens to them, it's the will of God," said Donald B. Kraybill, author and professor of sociology and Anabaptist studies at Messiah College, 10 miles west of Harrisburg.

Kraybill offered his assessment under oath yesterday as the Amish accused of 23 of the traffic citations - 18 months' worth - went on trial. Judge Timothy Creany won't render a verdict until Assistant District Attorney Heath Long brings in a transportation expert to testify next month.

Lawyers for the Amish from the Greater Pittsburgh chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Pittsburgh firm of Reed Smith Shaw and McClay want Pennsylvania to mimic Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Kentucky, where the triangle mandate is viewed as an infringement on religious liberty.

Failing that, the lawyers want Pennsylvania to follow Ohio, New York and Iowa, which allow the group to use reflective gray tape, which is almost invisible by day, as an alternative.

Experts called by the defense Wednesday said the state rule placed a burden on adhering to a religious tenet and there was a good alternative to the orange-triangle law.

The alternative is outlining the rear of the buggy with the gray tape, said Philip Garvey, who studies traffic warning signs for the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute at Penn State University.

"My opinion is that the (tape) the Swartzentrubers want to use is an adequate and appropriate replacement," Garvey testified.

[Skooz]

You know, sometimes the cookie cutter approach to law just doesn't work. These people just just be left alone and not made to conform to all the dictats of the state legislature or wherever the triangle law came from. If the tape works, what's the problem?

[oldironsides]

You drive around these horse and mule drawn vehicles every day you may have a different opinion. We have Amish getting whacked all the time. All the townships have been cutting them slack for years while they slam the regular taxpayers hard for zoning violations and the like. You try to have your youngster work in a saw mill and see what happens. We even have a congressman loony enough to want to change child labor laws for the Amish. You cannot have 2 sets of laws for the road and zoning. It does not work that way. We had one Amish dude sent to jail by the district justice because he erected an addition without proper permits and essentially told the officials to stuff it. The laws are on the books for a reason and should not be broken for a select few.

[grasshopper2]

I think this case touches on a more philosophical and fundamental question: who has a right to use the public right-of-way?

For centuries, the public roads were understood to be the province of human beings on foot or horseback. The triange law suggests that the horse and buggy driver has less of a right to the public road than the higher speed automobile user in violation of the American principle of equality.

[Nitro]

The reality of the situation is this...

if you come around a turn at 55 mph and find a buggy in front of you, you would be hard pressed to avoid giving the horse an Amish enema!!

So I hardly think it is persecution, it is merely a matter of a uniform safety code!!

[I Corps]

We had one Amish dude sent to jail by the district justice because he erected an addition without proper permits and essentially told the officials to stuff it. The laws are on the books for a reason and should not be broken for a select few.

Permits to build, permits to put in a septic system, permits to cut down a bush, permits to use ground water. Permit to use "YOUR" property as "YOU see fit and NOT according to the dictate of some limpXick neighbor or petty politician. There's a unique idea. Maybe someone should write a Constitution. Oh. They did ....

I Corps

[grasshopper2]

To use your same example, what if you came around a blind curve at 55 and there was a disabled tractor trailer in the road ahead of you? You would be road kill.

It's the responsiblity of the driver to only drive within sight stopping distance.

It's patently unfair and unAmerican to restrict the use of the public right of way to only licensed drivers of motorized vehicles. Pedestrian, cyclists, tractors, and esquestrians all have a right to use the government roads. The street are public property owned by the entire citizenry not just people who are rich enough, healthy enough or skilled enough to own and operate a motorized vehicle. That's like restricting access to public building to only one class of citizens.

[galt-jw]

amish dont vote. better rethink that one, graber.

[Nitro]

You are, of course, correct!

I was just trying to be funny while making the point that I don't think it is an Amish thing. It is just a safety thing that slow moving vehicles are required by law to display a reflective triangle, it doesn't single out the Amish and it hardly rises to the level of a freedom of speech issue.

The triangle marks slow movers, it isn't an Amish identification device!!

[general_re]

Amish ready to roll if judgment goes against them

Like the joke about an Amish drive-by?

Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, BANG! Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop...

[Sangamon Kid]

We had one Amish dude sent to jail by the district justice because he erected an addition without proper permits and essentially told the officials to stuff it. The laws are on the books for a reason and should not be broken for a select few.

Your reaction to people who love freedom and resist intrusive government is interesting.

[jpsb]

commie