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Wisconsin
v. Yoder
406
U.S. 205 (1972)
The
Rothgerber Johnson & Lyons Religious Institutions
Group gratefully acknowledges the contribution of the
Ethics and Public Policy Center which provided the following case commentary taken from Terry Eastland, Religious
Liberty in the Supreme Court: The Cases That Define
the Debate over Church and State (1993).
In
1879 the Supreme Court held in Reynolds v. U.S.,
98 U.S. 145, that religiously motivated conduct created
no claim to exemption from otherwise valid law. The Court
followed this principle in 1940 in Minersville v. Gobitis.
In overruling Gobitis three years later in West
Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Court
did not explicitly repudiate its reasoning in that case
or in Reynolds. Not until 1963, in Sherbert v.
Verner, did the Court prove willing to say that the
Constitution can require an exemption for conduct grounded
in religious belief from otherwise valid law. Yet Sherbert
was the sole exception to the Court's jurisprudence in this
area—until Wisconsin v. Yoder. In this case the Court
relied on Sherbert to rule that the state may not
require Amish parents to send their children to school beyond
the eighth grade. The Court articulated a "balancing" approach
in deciding the case: "[A] State's interest in universal
education... is not totally free from a balancing process
when it impinges on fundamental rights. . . ."
Wisconsin
state law required parents of all children to send them
to private or public schools until they reached age 16.
Some Amish parents, however, refused to send their children,
ages 14 and 15, to public school after they completed the
eighth grade. The parents were convicted of violating the
compulsory-attendance law. The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed
their convictions on free-exercise grounds.
Yoder
produced four opinions. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote
for the Court, expressing the views of six members. Justice
Potter Stewart and Justice Byron White wrote separate concurring
opinions. Justices Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist did
not participate in the case. Only Justice William O. Douglas
dissented, and his was a partial dissent. His opinion and
Chief Justice Burger's opinion for the Court are presented
here.
Participating
in Wisconsin v. Yoder, decided May 15, 1972, were
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Associate Justices William
J. Brennan, Jr., Harry A. Blackmun, William O. Douglas,
Thurgood Marshall, Potter Stewart, and Byron R. White.
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