Wisconsin v. Yoder

Summary

Wisconsin v. Yoder, decided on 15 May 1972, asked whether a state may compel Amish parents to keep their children in school after the eighth grade. Jonas Yoder and Wallace Miller, members of the Old Order Amish, and Adin Yutzy, of the Conservative Amish Mennonite Church, lived in Green County, Wisconsin. State law required attendance at a public or private school until age sixteen, but the three fathers withdrew their children, aged fourteen and fifteen, after the eighth grade. They were convicted in the county court and fined five dollars each. The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed the convictions under the Free Exercise Clause, and the State sought review. Wisconsin argued that universal schooling prepares every child to take part in self-government and to support himself, that religiously motivated conduct (as distinct from belief) may be regulated for the general welfare, and that the State as parens patriae must protect a child's own chance at a secondary education, whatever the parents wish. The Amish answered, supported by uncontradicted testimony from the scholar John A. Hostetler and the educator Donald A. Erickson, that their faith requires separation from worldly values, that high school would draw their adolescents away from the community at the very age when they must learn farming, homemaking and the Ordnung, and that their own vocational training under parental and church guidance already produces self-reliant, law-abiding citizens. Chief Justice Burger, for the Court, affirmed. He held that only interests of the highest order, not otherwise served, can outweigh a legitimate free exercise claim. He took care to separate religious conviction from a merely philosophical way of life, using Thoreau at Walden as his example of the second, and found the Amish claim rooted in a faith practiced for nearly three centuries. Against that burden, he judged the State's gain from one or two more years of schooling speculative, given the community's long record of self-sufficiency. He also stressed parents' traditional direction of a child's upbringing, citing Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925). Seven Justices took part. Justice Douglas joined the judgment as to Jonas Yoder, whose daughter Frieda had testified that she shared her parents' faith, but dissented as to Miller and Yutzy, whose children had not been asked. He argued that the children's own views on their schooling should have been heard, since a decision for the parents would shape the children's futures. The library text gives the Chief Justice's opinion and an excerpt from Justice Douglas's partial dissent; the concurrences of Justices Stewart and White are not included, and most notes have been dropped, though a few explanatory notes remain after the judgment line. In Employment Division v. Smith (1990) the Court narrowed its test for free exercise claims but described Yoder as a case joining religious liberty with parental rights. Congress responded to Smith with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, and Yoder remains a leading authority in disputes over religion, parenthood and compulsory education.

Plot or Argument

• The fathers of Green County and their convictions

  Burger recounts the prosecutions, the five-dollar fines, the expert testimony on Amish history from the Swiss Anabaptists onward, and the Amish view that learning-through-doing after the eighth grade, not high school, prepares a young person for adult baptism and life in the church community.

• Part I: the State's duty and its limits

  Providing public schools ranks at the apex of a state's functions, yet Pierce v. Society of Sisters showed that even this duty yields to fundamental rights. The State must show an interest of the highest order that cannot be served another way.

• Part II: a religious claim, not a philosophy

  The Court asks whether Amish faith and Amish daily life are truly inseparable. A purely secular rejection of modern values, like Thoreau's at Walden Pond, would not qualify; the Amish claim, sustained by centuries of practice and the Ordnung, does.

• Part III: weighing Wisconsin's arguments

  The opinion answers the State's points about citizenship, self-support and the line between belief and action. Because the Amish informal vocational training continues past the eighth grade, the marginal gain from one or two more years of formal school is judged speculative.

• Part IV: parents, children and parens patriae

  Rejecting the argument drawn from Prince v. Massachusetts, the Court notes that no Amish child was shown to want something different and that the case concerns the parents' own criminal liability; the tradition of parental direction of religious upbringing weighs heavily.

• Part V: the holding and its limits

  The First and Fourteenth Amendments bar Wisconsin from compelling attendance to age sixteen. Courts are not school boards, few groups could make a comparable showing, and states remain free to set reasonable standards for Amish vocational education.

• Justice Douglas: the child's voice

  Douglas agrees as to Jonas Yoder but dissents as to the other two fathers. Children are persons under the Bill of Rights, the high schooler may wish to become a pianist or an astronaut, and the views of Barbara Miller and Vernon Yutzy should be heard on remand. He also questions the weight the majority placed on the Amish law-abiding record.

Characters

• Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice; author of the opinion of the Court

  Wrote the opinion holding that Wisconsin could not compel Amish children to attend high school to age sixteen.

• William O. Douglas, Associate Justice; dissented in part

  Joined the result as to Jonas Yoder but argued that the other children's own religious wishes should have been heard.

• Jonas Yoder, respondent

  Old Order Amish father in Green County whose daughter Frieda, fifteen, had finished the eighth grade.

• Wallace Miller, respondent

  Old Order Amish father convicted with Yoder for keeping his daughter Barbara out of high school.

• Adin Yutzy, respondent

  Member of the Conservative Amish Mennonite Church whose son Vernon, fourteen, was the youngest child involved.

• John A. Hostetler, expert witness

  Scholar of Amish society whose testimony on Amish history and beliefs the Court treated as uncontradicted.

• Donald A. Erickson, expert witness

  Educator who described Amish learning-by-doing as well suited to preparing their children for adult life in the community.

Lessons

• Belief rooted in a way of life

  The Court distinguished a religious way of life from a personal philosophy, using Thoreau as its example of the second. Only the first could claim the protection of the Free Exercise Clause, and the Amish showed that their farming, dress and schooling all flowed from their faith.

  • Why did the Court mention Thoreau at Walden Pond?
  • What evidence persuaded the Court that the Amish objection was religious rather than merely a preference?
  • Should courts be in the business of deciding what counts as religion?

• The weight a state must carry

  Chief Justice Burger required interests of the highest order, not otherwise served, before a law could override sincere religious practice. Wisconsin's interest in education was strong, but the Court asked what one or two extra years would really add for children already trained at home.

  • What reasons did Wisconsin give for compulsory high school attendance?
  • Why did the Court call the State's gain speculative in this case?
  • Would the result change if the Amish provided no vocational training at all?

• Who speaks for the child?

  Justice Douglas agreed that the parents' faith was sincere but asked whether fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds had their own wishes. The majority answered that the case concerned the parents' criminal convictions and that no child had been shown to disagree.

  • Why did Douglas join the judgment for Jonas Yoder but not for the other fathers?
  • How did the majority respond to the concern for the children's views?
  • At what age should a young person's own convictions about schooling and faith count in law?

• Parents and the long tradition of nurture

  The Court called the primary role of parents in raising their children an enduring American tradition and traced it to Pierce v. Society of Sisters. Yoder joins religious freedom to parental authority, a pairing the Court recalled in 1990 when it described the case as resting on both.

  • What did Pierce v. Society of Sisters decide about private schools?
  • Why might the combination of parental rights and religious liberty be stronger than either alone?

Context

Compulsory school laws spread across the states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and after the Second World War many rural districts were consolidated into larger high schools. Amish families, who had kept their children in one-room schools through the eighth grade, clashed with officials in Pennsylvania, Iowa and elsewhere in the 1950s and 1960s, and several states worked out vocational-school arrangements. The Court's free exercise doctrine had recently been shaped by Sherbert v. Verner (1963), which asked whether a compelling interest justified burdening religious practice.

Composition

After the Green County convictions in 1968, the families were represented by William B. Ball, a Pennsylvania lawyer engaged by the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled for the families in 1971; the case was argued in Washington on 8 December 1971 and decided on 15 May 1972. The library text prints Burger's opinion and part of Douglas's separate opinion.

Reception

The decision became a central precedent for religious exemptions and for parents' authority over education, and it is frequently cited in discussions of home and religious schooling. Commentators have debated whether it rests chiefly on religious liberty, on parental rights, or on the particular history of the Amish. In Employment Division v. Smith (1990) the Court limited the compelling-interest test for generally applicable laws but preserved Yoder as a combined free exercise and parental rights case; the Religious Freedom Restoration Act followed in 1993.

Comparisons

• west-virginia-v-barnette

  Douglas cites Barnette's protection of schoolchildren who refused the flag salute; both cases set conscience against a state's educational program, though Barnette concerns compelled speech rather than attendance.

• reynolds-v-united-states

  Douglas notes that Yoder departs from Reynolds's line between belief, which Congress cannot touch, and action, which it may regulate; reading the two together shows how free exercise doctrine changed between 1879 and 1972.

• virginia-statute-for-religious-freedom

  Jefferson's statute declares that no one shall suffer for religious opinions; Yoder asks the harder question of whether religiously required conduct, such as leaving school, must also be accommodated.

• the-founding-documents

  The First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, applied to Wisconsin through the Fourteenth Amendment, is the text the Court interprets.

• engel-v-vitale

  Engel addresses the Establishment Clause in public schools a decade earlier; Yoder turns to the other religion clause and to families who leave the schools altogether.

• on-liberty

  Mill argued that the state may require education while leaving its content to parents; his view offers a useful counterpoint to both Burger's deference to Amish parents and Douglas's concern for the child.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How the opinion describes Amish history from the Anabaptists onward and why that history matters to the legal claim.
• The phrase interests of the highest order and how the Court applies it.
• The Thoreau comparison that separates religious from philosophical objections.
• The State's parens patriae argument and the majority's answer.
• Justice Douglas's examples of the careers a child might want that would require leaving the Amish way of life.

Key terms and names

Free Exercise Clause

The First Amendment's guarantee that government will not prohibit the free practice of religion.

Compulsory attendance law

A statute requiring children to attend school up to a set age; Wisconsin's required attendance until sixteen.

Parens patriae

Latin for parent of the country; the idea that the state may act to protect children's interests, even against their parents.

Ordnung

The rules of an Amish church community governing dress, work and daily conduct.

Old Order Amish

The most traditional branch of the Amish, descended from Swiss Anabaptists, who live apart from many modern practices.

Dissenting in part

Agreeing with some of a judgment but disagreeing with other portions; Douglas agreed as to one father and dissented as to two.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What did Wisconsin's law require, and what did the three fathers do instead?
2. Comprehension Why did the Amish accept schooling through the eighth grade but object to high school?
3. Comprehension On which respondent did Justice Douglas agree with the majority, and why?
4. Interpretation Why does the Chief Justice emphasize that the Amish have practiced their faith for nearly three centuries?
5. Interpretation Is the Thoreau comparison a fair way to separate religious from nonreligious objections?
6. Interpretation How do the majority and Justice Douglas each picture the relationship between Amish parents and their children?
7. Big Question When the duties of a family's faith and the duties of citizenship pull in different directions, who should decide how a child is educated?

Faith Connections

• Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (Scripture)

  Parents are told to teach God's words diligently to their children at home and on the way, a charge the Amish understood as theirs to fulfill directly.

• Romans 12:2 (Scripture)

  Be not conformed to this world: the Amish rest their separation from worldly influences on this verse, which the opinion's description of their beliefs echoes.

• Acts 5:29 (Scripture)

  Peter's answer that we ought to obey God rather than men frames the believer's dilemma when a civil command conflicts with conscience.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Because the Amish objection to high school is a sincere religious conviction woven into their whole way of life, and because Wisconsin's gain from one or two more years of schooling is slight for children trained at home in a self-sufficient community, the State's interest does not rise to the highest order needed to override free exercise.

Rhetorical device: contrast by example. Burger sets the Amish beside Thoreau (quote 2), using a familiar American figure who also rejected the values of his time to show exactly which kind of objection falls outside the Religion Clauses.

Debate: Resolved: that a state may require every child to attend formal schooling until age sixteen regardless of the parents' religious convictions.

Memory Work

The essence of all that has been said and written on the subject is that only those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion.

It is the future of the student, not the future of the parents, that is imperiled by today's decision.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how Chief Justice Burger weighs Wisconsin's interest in education against the Amish claim, and evaluate whether Justice Douglas's concern for the children answers his reasoning.

Comparison with West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette: Compare how Barnette and Yoder treat the conscience of schoolchildren and their families when it conflicts with a state's educational requirements.

Medical Lens

Apart from an expert's passing opinion about the strain high school might place on Amish adolescents, the opinions concern religious liberty, parental authority and schooling rather than medicine.

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Stage a moot court with counsel for Wisconsin, counsel for the three fathers, and a third advocate appointed to speak for the children, as Justice Douglas wished.

• Essay

  Write a short brief for Wisconsin explaining why a state's interest in educating citizens should outweigh a family's religious objection, then a reply brief for the Amish.

• Dialogue

  Imagine a conversation in 1972 between Frieda Yoder and a classmate who went on to high school, each explaining how they hope to spend their adult lives.

• Fiction

  Tell the story of the day a Green County school administrator drives out to the Yoder farm to ask why Frieda has not enrolled.

Further Reading

• Compulsory Education and the Amish: The Right Not to Be Modern, Albert N. Keim (ed.)

  Essays on the Amish school controversies and the Yoder litigation, including a contribution by the families' lawyer.

• Amish Society, John A. Hostetler

  Classic study of Amish life by the scholar who testified at the Green County trial.

• The Riddle of Amish Culture, Donald B. Kraybill

  Sociological account of how the Amish negotiate with modern institutions, including schools.