This week in Christian history: First Mother’s Day service, Martin Luther’s books burned, Wisconsin v. Yoder
Wisconsin v. Yoder decision released – May 15, 1972
This week marks the anniversary of when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a group of Amish parents didn't have to send their children to public high school due to their religious beliefs.
Known as Wisconsin v. Yoder, the case centered on members of the Old Order Amish religion and the Conservative Amish Mennonite Church challenging a Wisconsin state law mandating public school attendance until age 16.
The Amish parents believed that schooling should stop at the eighth grade, and that requiring their children to attend high school-level courses went against their sincerely held convictions.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger authored the seven-judge court opinion, which was technically unanimous as a partial dissent still agreed with the majority ruling and two other justices, Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist, took no part in the case.
“The impact of the compulsory-attendance law on respondents' practice of the Amish religion is not only severe, but inescapable, for the Wisconsin law affirmatively compels them, under threat of criminal sanction, to perform acts undeniably at odds with fundamental tenets of their religious beliefs,” wrote Burger.
“It carries with it precisely the kind of objective danger to the free exercise of religion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent.”
