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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.