Wisconsin v. Yoder

In Wisconsin v. Yoder (406 U.S. 205), the United States Supreme Court, by a ruling of 6-1 on May 15, 1972, upheld the judgment of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in voiding the convictions of the Amish plaintiffs (Yoder, et al) under the state's compulsory school attendance law. The convictions of the plaintiffs were voided under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The case had come to the U.S. Court as a result of a Wisconsin compulsory school attendance law which required parents to enroll their children in public or private schools until at least the age of 16. The defendents, who were members of an Old Order Amish community, refused to send their 14 and 15 year old children to the consolidated public schools, or to otherwise provide education, in satisfaction of the statutes, for them after they had completed the eighth grade.

At lower court levels, the Amishmen were convicted of violating the statute and fined. They claimed that their rights under the free exercise of religion clause (First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) were violated by the statute and appealed the conviction. Their appeal was heard by the state Supreme Court, where they were upheld. The State of Wisconsin then took the matter to the United States Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Warren Burger delivered the general opinion of the court. Justice William O. Douglas wrote an opinion dissenting in part.

The Amish schools controversy

The background to the 1972 US Supreme Court decision in the Wisconsin v. Yoder case was a decades-long controversy surrounding educational reform as it affected the Amish religious community. The issues involved concerned the consolidation of rural school districts (the one-room schoolhouse) into larger districts, compulsory school attendance laws, and teacher certification, all of which were seen by the Amish as threats to their way of life.

The move towards schools consolidation

The one-room schoolhouse of rural America (affectionately known to many Americans as the "little red schoolhouse" though, in truth, it was more often white) continues to be a staple of American nostalgia. At one time in the early decades of the 20th century, one-fourth of all rural pupils in the United States attended one of nearly 188,000 such schools.However, throughout the 20th century, and, in fact, beginning even before that, the one-room schoolhouse was largely phased out in favor of "consolidated" schools until at present, there are very few such schools remaining.

In the one-room school, a number of pupils (usually a few dozen at most) in grades 1 through 8 were all taught together by a single teacher. By consolidating several such one-room schools into one, larger school, a number of practical and educational benefits could be achieved, or so it was alleged by the proponents of consolidation.

These alleged benefits included the possibility of a more diversified curriculum, the ability of the teacher to devote more time to the pupils of each grade level, lower financial costs, and the extension of quality education to rural students.

But while many Americans lamented the loss of the one-room country schoolhouse with its nostalgic recollections of a simpler time, for one group, it meant more than that. The Amish, who have always taken a skeptical attitude towards progress and modernity generally, considered that the intrusion of the consolidated public schools and the extension of the minimum age for compulsory education which went with it, threatened their very existence as a religious community and a people.

Compromise and confrontation

The schools controversy erupted in several states, including Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Wisconsin - in short, wherever there were significant concentrations of Amish. Prior to this (and until about the mid 1950s), the Amish generally had sent their children to the public schools for elementary education - that is, up through the 8th grade, or age 14. But with the schools controversy and the push by educational reformers to consolidate rural districts, the Amish began to withdraw their children from the public schools and form their own Amish schools to provide basic elementary education.

In each case, the schools controversy took slightly different forms. In Pennsylvania, beginning as early as the late 1930s, the issue centered on consolidation, teacher certification, and the accompanying revision of the state mandated compulsory attendance laws which were extended to age 16.

In the Pennsylvania case, a compromise was reached in 1955 whereby the state would accept a form of home education and training, typically centered around the Amish home and farm, as satisfactory compliance under the state's vocational education provisions. All that was required of the Amish vocational schools was record-keeping on the part of the Amish and a few hours per week in attendance at an established school. Teachers (often the child's parents or family) were not required to be certified in accordance with the state's certification standards. This worked well and some other states copied the Pennsylvania plan.

In Iowa in the mid-1960s, the schools controversy erupted onto the national stage when public school officials in one district, accompanied by police, arrived at an Amish private school with the intention of transporting the Amish children into town to the consolidated school against the wishes of their parents. The press had got wind of the operation in advance and the nation was treated to pictures of tearful Amish fathers and mothers watching as some of their children were bussed off to town with other Amish children fleeing into a nearby corn field to avoid being seized. Throughout the crisis in Iowa, Amish parents were fined for violating the school attendance laws, and when they refused to pay the fines, which they felt would be an admission of guilt, were arrested and imprisoned. Farms, stock, and harvest were seized and put on the auction block.

Images of apparently peaceful, law-abiding American citizens having their lives disrupted and their children taken away in this fashion, reminiscent as they were, in the minds of many, of the kind of religious persecutions which the forebears of the Amish had experienced in Europe and which they had fled for the promised freedom and tolerance of America, sparked a nationwide outcry.

Eventually, Iowa governor Harold Hughes stepped in and ordered a cooling off period while a less explosive solution could be sought. In 1967, the Iowa state legislature passed an amendment to the state's educational standard's law permitting bona fide religious groups to file for an exemption to the state's standards, and the Iowa confrontation was defused.

Meanwhile, as a result of the Iowa events, Reverend William C. Lindholm, a Lutheran minister, formed with others the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom. The Amish themselves do not believe in settling disputes by resorting to courts either to prosecute others or to defend themselves. It was this Committee which would lead the fight, financially, legally, and politically, which resulted in the US Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Yoder.

The Wisconsin case

Events in Green County, Wisconsin, which was the home to a recently established Amish community, served as the immediate backdrop to the Court's ruling. There Jonas Yoder, Wallace Miller, and Adin Yutzy (who, ironically, had moved to Wisconsin from Iowa a few years before to avoid the schools controversy which had erupted there) were tried for violating the compulsory school attendance law in Green County.

Rev. Lindholm's National Committee took up the cause and defended the men at lower court levels and, when they were convicted and fined, appelaed the convictions to the Wisconsin Supreme Court where the convictions were set aside on constitutional grounds involving the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

The Court decision

Oral arguments were presented before the Supreme Court on December 8, 1971 and the decison on the case was issued on May 15, 1972.

In arguments presented before the court, William B. Ball, an attorney specializing in constitutional issues related to the separation of church and state, represented the respondents (Yoder, at al) as chief counsel. He had had been engaged for that purpose by the National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom.

Friends of the Court briefs were filed by a variety of religious bodies, including the National Council of Churches, the Seventh Day Adventist Church, the Mennonite Central Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the synagogue Council of America and the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs. The U.S. Catholic Conference also supported the Amish, although they did not file a formal legal brief.

Among the expert witnesses called on behalf of the Amish respondents were John A. Hostetler, author of Amish Society and Donald Erickson, editor of the volumePublic Controls for Non-Public Schools, who testified as a specialist on educational issues.

The State's case

The prosecution case was handled by Assistant Attorney General for the State of Wisconsin, John W. Calhoun. The State of Wisconsin did not contest the fact that the Amish were a bona fide religion or that the application of the state's compulsory attendance laws would possibly or likely have serious detrimental effects on the Amish religious community.

As Justice Burger stated in his opinion, delivered on behalf of the Court:

"In sum, the unchallenged testimony of acknowledged experts in education and religious history . . . support the claim that enforcement of the State's requirement of compulsory education after the eighth grade would gravely endanger if not destroy the free exercise of respondents' religious beliefs."

Instead, they claimed that religious liberty is no defense against compulsory education laws and that the state had overriding interests in the promotion of education among all its citizens.

Or, as Justice Burger put it, again on behalf of the Court:

"It's (i.e., the State's - ed) position is that the State's interest in universal, compulsory formal secondary education to age 16 is so great that it is paramount to the undisputed claims of respondents that their mode of preparing their youth for Amish life, after the traditional elementary education, is an essential part of their religious belief and practice . . ."

The State of Wisconsin also asserted on its behalf that the statutes in question were neutral in that they applied equally to all citizens and did not apply just to religious groupings or to any particulat religion. The Court, however, refused to dispose of the case on this ground, stating (in Burger's words):

"A regulation neutral on its face may, in its application, nonetheless offend the constitutional requirement for governmental neutrality if it unduly burdens the free exercise of religion."