Analyzing a court Decision

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Analyzing a Court Decision Title and citation Wisconsin v. Jonas Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), is the case in which the United States Supreme Court found that Amish children could not be placed under compulsory education past 8th grade. The parents' fundamental right to freedom of religion was determined to outweigh the state's interest in educating their children. Level of Type of Court The landmark Supreme Court decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) addressed the constitutional balance a Wisconsin compulsory education statute and the rights of the Old Order Amish religion and the Conservative Amish Mennonite Church to educate their children in conformity with their religious beliefs. Facts The court found that Amish children could not be placed under compulsory education past 8th grade. The parents' fundamental right to freedom of religion was determined to outweigh the state's interest in educating their children. U.S. Supreme Court Respondents, members of the Old Order Amish religion and the Conservative Amish Mennonite Church, were convicted of violating Wisconsin's compulsory school attendance law (which requires a child's school attendance until age 16) by declining to send their children to public or private school after they had graduated from the eighth grade. The evidence showed that the Amish provide continuing informal vocational education to their children designed to prepare them for life in the rural Amish community. The evidence also showed that respondents believed that high school attendance was contrary to the Amish religion and way of life, and that they would endanger their own salvation and that of their children by complying with the law. The State Supreme Court sustained respondents' claim that application of the compulsory school attendance law to them violated their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. Holding Wisconsin v. Yoder, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 15, 1972, ruled (7–0) that Wisconsin’s compulsory school attendance law was unconstitutional as applied to the Amish (primarily members of the Old Order Amish Mennonite Church), because it violated their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.

The case involved three Amish fathers—Jonas Yoder, Wallace Miller, and Adin Yutzy—who, in accordance with their religion, refused to enroll their children, aged 14 and 15, in public or private schools after they had completed the eighth grade. The state of Wisconsin required, pursuant to its compulsory attendance law, that children attend school to at least the age of 16. The fathers were found guilty of violating the law, and each was fined $5. A trial and circuit court upheld the convictions, concluding that the state law was a “reasonable and constitutional” use of government power. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin, however, found that the application of the law to the Amish violated the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause, On May 15, 1972, the case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court; Justices William Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell, Jr., did not participate in the consideration or decision. In a comprehensive examination of the Amish, the Court found that their religious beliefs and way of life were “inseparable and interdependent” and had not been “altered in fundamentals for centuries.” The Court went on to conclude that secondary schooling would expose Amish children to attitudes and values that ran counter to their beliefs and would interfere with both their religious development and their integration into the Amish lifestyle. According to the Court, compelling Amish children to enroll in public or private schools past the eighth grade would have forced them to “either abandon belief and be assimilated into society at large or be forced to migrate to some other and more tolerant region.” Significance Wisconsin v. Yoder is a significant case for a few reasons. The Supreme Court's decision to side with Yoder reaffirmed a trend that had started in the 1963 case of Sherbert v. Verner where the court sided with Adell Sherbert against the state of South Carolina in a case regarding religious freedoms. the trend was one that went against the belief action doctrine which was established in the case of Reynolds v. United States in 1879. When the Supreme Court hears a case about religious freedoms there are many factors that must be considered as siding with religious freedom in every case would, as Chief Justice Morrison Waite argued in Reynolds v. United States. Aside from the above-stated impacts of Wisconsin v. Yoder, the case has continued to impact education in the United States. After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Yoder, advocates for homeschooling began using the case as legal justification for their decision to withhold their children from traditional education offered by the state or private institutions. U.S. Supreme Court Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) Wisconsin v. Yoder No. 70-110 Argued December 8, 1971, Decided May 15, 1972, 406 U.S. 205

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