Wisconsin v. Yoder

Summary

The U.S. Supreme Court held that Wisconsin's compulsory school-attendance law, as applied to Old Order Amish and Conservative Amish Mennonite parents who refused to send their children to high school, violated the Free Exercise Clause. The Court concluded that the State's interest in universal secondary education did not outweigh the severe interference with the respondents' sincere religious beliefs and established way of life.

Holdings

1. On the record presented, the First and Fourteenth Amendments prevented Wisconsin from compelling the Amish respondents to cause their children to attend formal high school after completion of the eighth grade and until age 16.
2. Religiously grounded conduct is not categorically outside the protection of the Free Exercise Clause; a neutral law may nevertheless violate the Clause if its application unduly burdens religious exercise.
3. The Court did not decide how a case should be resolved if an Amish child expressly wished to attend high school contrary to the parents' religious objections.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Wisconsin could constitutionally compel Amish parents, under threat of criminal sanction, to cause their children to attend formal high school until age 16.
2. Whether the State's interest in universal compulsory secondary education was sufficiently substantial to override respondents' sincere religious objections under the Free Exercise Clause.
3. Whether the First and Fourteenth Amendments protected the parents' religiously motivated refusal to comply with the compulsory-attendance law despite the law's facial neutrality and general applicability.

Disposition

affirmed