Kate Lisa is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media eight families have filed a federal class-action suit against the state Health Department and various public school districts to challenge regulations that allow school officials to override immunization exemptions for students with underlying conditions. The lawsuit includes the Coxsackie-Athens Central School District. Attorneys Sujata Gibson, Michael Sussman, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mary Holland filed the case in federal court late last month representing the families living in locations across the state in their battles to allow their children to return to school after district administrators overruled valid medical exemptions signed by the students’ physicians, freeing them from certain required vaccines. Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit anti-vaccination activist group founded by Kennedy, hosted a digital Zoom press conference at 10 a.m. August 6, with the legal team, a licensed physician and two parents with immune-compromised children involved in the litigation. The families named as defendants the state Health Department and Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, Coxsackie-Athens School District, the Albany City School District, the Shenendehowa School District, the Penfield School District, the Lansing School District, the Ithaca City School District, the South Huntington School, and the Three Village School District. The superintendent of each district was named individually, as well. The state Health Department would not comment, citing pending litigation. Randall Squier, Coxsackie-Athens superintendent of schools, did not return multiple calls for comment. In June 2019, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed new legislation into law, amending Public Health Law § [Section] 2164, which no longer allows children from attending day care, preK or public, private and parochial school for non-medical vaccine exemption. In taking legal action, the attorneys with Children’s Health Defense, are asking the court to find the state policy unconstitutional and allow the children to return to school. Read the full story in The Ravena News-Herald.