Yoder v Wisconsin:
The Amish
Challenge Compulsory Education Laws The
photo ran first in the Des Moines Register. The black
and white picture showed eight
Amish children fleeing towards a cornfield.
Some had already crossed a wire fence and were
in the safety of the
stalks. Others
were just passing through
the fence. And
one Amish boy, dressed
entirely in black and wearing the traditional
wide-brimmed Amish hat, was still
in full stride, running towards the corn.
It is a compelling photograph. The
picture was soon picked up nationally, running in Life
magazine and newspapers
around the country.
It helped spark a
movement. A
movement that would
eventually lead to a landmark Supreme Court decision
on religious liberty. Why
did these Amish children in Buchanan County Iowa run
for
the fields in 1965? The story begins with the decision
of local authorities to
crack down on Amish parents who sent their kids to
schools operated by their
own faith. The
Amish teachers in
one-room schoolhouse near Hazleton and Olewein were
not state-certified.
In the eyes of the state, that made them
illegal. The
Iowa school code required
parents to send their children to state-licensed
schools. Authorities
first threatened parents with fines. For each day
of school their children missed,
the fines would increase. Moreover, if
they failed to pay the fines, their property would be
sold at auction to pay
off their debts.
The
question, as the Buchanan county attorney put it, is
this: “Do these parents have the right to withhold a
basic education from their
children under the guise of religious freedom?”
The district school superintendent thought the
answer to that question
was “no.” He
told reporters the law
”ought to be enforced, not winked at.” The
plan was to round up the Amish kids, load them on to a
school bus, and take them to the public schools. But when the
bus made it rounds to Amish
farms, no kids were to be found. They
either hid or headed for one of their own one-room
schoolhouses. And
so, the school bus driver, with his empty
bus, headed to one of the Amish schools.
And along with the bus came a group of
interested parties.
They included the county sheriff, the county
attorney, reporters, photographers, and worried Amish
parents. The
sheriff entered the school and ordered the children
out
to the waiting bus.
The children filed
out, but as they headed toward the bus, a shout came
from an Amish man in the
crowd. “Run!”
he yelled. And
that’s when many of the children took
off—and when the famous photograph was snapped. Despite
the adverse publicity from the photo, authorities
did not give up.
A few days after the
first attempted roundup, the school superintendent and
truant officer Owen
Snively tried it again.
At the Charity
Flats Amish School, a group of Amish men stood
shoulder to shoulder in an
attempt to block Snively and others from entering
their school. The
sheriff pushed them aside and the
authorities entered the schoolroom. They
found crying children.
Sixteen children
who began singing, “Jesus Loves Me”: “Jesus loves me,
this I know, for the
Bible tells me so.”
Snively and the
superintendent tried to persuade the children to get
on the bus and go to a
certified school.
As they did so, an
Amish leader loudly recited verses from Scripture. Snively
put his hands on the shcoulders of an Amish girl and
tried to lead her toward the door. The
girl pulled back and screamed. Snively
then grabbed the girl by her arms. She
screamed again and broke away. This was not going
well. Finally,
Snively and the superintendent gave
up and the school bus returned to wherever it came
from, empty of students. The
Buchanan county fiasco convinced both local
authorities
and state leaders that another approach was needed. Buchanan
County officials flew to the state
capitol in Des Moines to meet with Governor Harold
Hughes. A
settlement was reached.
The Amish would lease their two one-room
schoolhouses to the state for
$1 each. In
return, the state would
provide certified teachers for the schools.
But the curriculum would not be the same
curriculum taught in the public
schools. The
state promised to make
“adjustments to avoid conflict with Amish religious
beliefs.” Developments
in Iowa were closely watched in the Amish
settlements of New Glarus, in nearby south central
Wisconsin. In
fact, many of the Amish residents in
Wisconsin actually had fled Buchanan County because of
the local crackdown on
their schools. The
Amish newcomers were largely welcomed in Wisconsin. Local
hardware stores and farm implement
dealers appreciated their business.
Hitching posts were placed around town to
accommodate the horses and
buggies used by the Amish as transport.
And Green County benefited from a boost in
tourism. People
in places like Chicago and Milwaukee,
it seemed, enjoyed riding around the hilly countryside
to check out the Amish,
as well as some of their famous baked goods.
Tour buses pulled up at Amish farms—and the
tourists returned to their
buses with bread, pies, and doughnuts. The
Amish community in New Glarus could trace its
religious
roots back to the Reformation. Among the
many forms of Protestantism to arise was Anabaptism. Anabaptists
followed the ethical teachings of
Jesus—especially his famous “Sermon on the Mount.” They lived
simply and wore austere
clothes. They
condemned drunkenness and
reveling. They rejected all forms of state control
over the church. They
renounced wars and oath-taking. And for
their beliefs, they faced widespread persecution. By
the late 1600s, a distinctive set of Amish beliefs had
emerged. We
need not get into the
details of that, but disagreement with other
Anabaptists over the practices of
shunning and excommunication had a lot to do with it. In Europe,
they faced persecution and
shortages of land to practice their agrarian
lifestyle. So
many Amish left Europe for the United
States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Over
time, a split developed in the U.S. Amish community. The split
was between those who became a bit
more progressive, a bit less concerned about keeping a
distance from worldly
temptations—and those who clung to more conservative
beliefs. The
split led to what is called “the Great
Schism.” Many
of the more progressive
Amish eventually became Mennonites. The
more conservative Amish came to be called “the Old
Order Amish.” The
100-member or so community in New Glarus,
Wisconsin was an Old Order Amish community. The
hope in New Glarus was to avoid the controversy that
led
so many of them to flee Iowa. School
Superintendent Ray Habeck said, “I do not foresee any
points of
controversy.” A
leader in the Amish
community said, “We plan to cooperate to the fullest
extent our religion
allows.” Jonas
Yoder moved to New Glarus from Ohio. He left Ohio
after his five-year-old daughter
died of bone cancer.
He suspected a
nearby chemical plant was the cause of her death. In New
Glarus, Yoder raised hogs. He had a
strong work ethic, but knew how to
laugh as well. He
was well-respected in
the tight-knit Amish community. Yoder’s
two daughters were enrolled in public schools during
the mid-1960s. But
they did not attend
gym classes. Jonas
Yoder objected to the
short and tight uniforms that were required.
He wrote a letter to the local school board. “Christian
propriety calls for one to be
modestly dressed while in public,” he wrote.
At first, the school board stuck to its guns. It told
Yoder his daughters would have to wear
the standard uniforms and shower after class.
But, after criticism, the school board and
Yoder reached a
compromise. His
girls would be allowed
to wear modest, homemade uniforms and would shower in
a separate dressing
room. The
Amish controversy in New Glarus caught the attention
of
state legislators in Madison. One
proposed bill allowed exemptions from physical
education classes when parents
objected on religious grounds. Another,
more sweeping, bill would have allowed Amish students
to leave school
altogether after they completed of eighth grade. But some
legislators worried that the
amendment to the compulsory education law would only
hurt Amish kids who might
wish to attend college or pursue careers outside the
Amish community. In the
end, the legislature took no action on the Amish
student bills. The
failure of the exemption bills convinced the New
Glarus
Amish of the need to establish their own schools. This was
part of a larger trend.
Between 1965 and 1970, the number of Amish
schools around the country more than doubled.
From 150 to 303.
In
the fall of 1968, the New Glarus Amish opened their
own
school. The
new school had only one
room. It
would had no electricity and no
running water. About three dozen Amish kids planned to
leave the public schools
to attend the new school. This plan
did
not sit well with public school officials.
State funding for schools was based on
enrollment numbers.
If the Amish left the public schools, the New
Glarus district would lose $20,000 in state funding. So
the local school superintendent visited a number of
Amish
families. He
begged them to keep their
students in school for at least the first few weeks of
the school year—until
the date on which the student population count would
be made. But
the Amish refused.
One Amish member said, “It would not have
been right to sit in their schools just so they could
collect money.” The
Amish were not opposed to their kids learning to write
or do arithmetic.
Those skills were
necessary to be a productive member of an Amish
community. But
there was much in the curriculum of the
public schools they didn’t like—especially in the high
schools. They
didn’t want their children to wear gym
clothes that exposed so much skin. They
didn’t want their kids exposed to television. They
didn’t want their children
to be taught the theory of evolution.
They worried about the temptations of school
dances and high school
social life in general.
They worried
about their kids drifting away from the faith. They
liked to point to the
admonition of Romans, Chapter 12: “Be not conformed to
this world.” Jonas
Yoder’s concerns with the public schools ran deep. He said that
public schools held “temptations
for a different world.
I don’t want to
condemn anybody, but we want to hold what we’ve got. We want to
hold our religion.” School
Superintendent Kenneth Glewen was not happy with the
Amish not playing ball in his financing scheme.
He contacted the district attorney of Green
County to see if truancy
charges might be brought against Amish children who
were under the age of 16
and not attending either the public or the Amish
school. By
comparing the Amish and public school
enrollment records, Glewen identified seven Amish
youngsters who seemed to be
in violation of Wisconsin’s compulsory education law. The
superintendent sent warning letters to parents whose
children he believed were acting in violation of state
law. Among the parents
to receive the warning letter was Jonas Yoder. A
couple of weeks later, he sent
a second, more threatening letter. If
parents refused to comply immediately, they would be
prosecuted. The
superintendent also visited a number of the Amish
parents. The
parents expressed their
concerns about worldliness. And they
pointed to the Free Exercise Clause of the
Constitution. They
believed firmly the First Amendment
protected their decision to raise their children
consistent with their religious
beliefs. In
late October 1968, Superintendent Glewen filed
criminal
complaints against three Amish fathers.
The complaint accused Jonas Yoder, Wallace
Miller, and Adin Yudsy of
violating the Wisconsin compulsory education law. Jonas Yoder
told reporters the law made no
sense when applied to the Amish: “The city people need
something for their
children to do. We
don’t.” The
charged offense was a misdemeanor. The maximum
penalty was a $50 fine and up to
three months in jail. At
their arraignment, the Amish defendants refused to
enter
a plea. Wallace
Miller told the judge,
“I don’t think we are guilty.” But, he
added, “Our religion doesn’t permit us to hire a
lawyer.” The
Amish generally resisted “going to law,”
as they called it.
They pointed to the
Sermon on the Mount where Jesus said, “If any man sues
you at law, and take
away thy coat, let him have thy cloak too.”
But some Amish drew a distinction between suing
and defending one’s self
in a criminal action. A
newly formed organization called the National
Committee
for Amish Religious Freedom approached the New Glarus
defendants. The
organization was looking for an
opportunity to challenge compulsory education laws. Would you,
they asked, be willing to become
defendants in a case testing the Wisconisn law? The
legal assistance would be free of charge. And the
Committee promised to simply tell the
judge what the Amish believed. One of
the defendants pointed out that The Book of Acts tells
that when Paul was
unjustly charged with a crime, he not only defended
himself, but appealed his
conviction to Rome.
The defendants
agreed to accept the Committee’s representation. But
it was a controversial decision. Jonas Yoder
said, “The decision wasn’t
approved by all our people all over the country.” The
Committee chose William Ball to represent Yoder,
Miller,
and Yutsy. Ball
was an experienced
litigator, probably the “premiere constitutional
litigator” in the country on
church-state relations.
Ball took the
case not just to win it for three defendants in
Wisconsin. He
hoped to establish a precedent that could
be used to expand religious freedom generally.
Ball wanted a win in the Supreme Court of the
United States. The
trial of Yoder, Miller, and Yutsy opened on April 2,
1969 in Monroe, Wisconsin. The courtroom
was filled with Amish men, dressed in black and
bearded. It
was a non-jury trial. Defense
attorney Ball moved to dismiss the complaints. He argued
that the Wisconsin law, as applied
to the three men, violated their free exercise rights
under the
Constitution. The
judge denied the
motion. The
prosecution’s first witness was Superintendent
Glewen. Glewen
described how he had
identified truant students, his discussions with the
Amish families, and the
warnings he had sent to them by certified mail.
The prosecution also called a teacher at the
Amish school who testified
that she had not seen any of the truant students in
her class. And
that was it. The
state rested. A simple case. The
defense began its case by calling Superintendent
Glewen back
to the stand. Glewen
acknowledged that
the school taught the theory of evolution.
And he admitted that the school neither taught
the Ten Commandments nor
provided any sort of moral training. The
curriculum was not “God-centered”—and the Amish were. Next,
Ball called Temple University professor John Hostetler
to the stand. Raised
Amish himself, Hostetler
was probably the country’s leading expert on the Amish
religion. The
professor testified that the Amish strive
to “be separate from the world.” They
want their children to have “an affinity for nature,”
to be tied “to the soil,”
and to live a simple, moderate life in a rural
society. He
testified they sought to promote obedience
to parents and a strong work ethic. Public
schools, in the Amish view, promoted a competing
value system. The
professor told the
judge, “I think that if the Amish youth are required
to attend, the value
system of the high school as we know it today, the
church community cannot last
long. It
will be destroyed.” On
cross-examination, the prosecutor got Hostetler to
admit
that the Amish did not separate themselves from the
world completely.
They interacted with neighbors and transacted
business. He
also got the professor to
acknowledge that nothing in the Amish faith
specifically forbid attendance at
public schools beyond a specific age. The
most dramatic moment of the trial came when the
prosecutor suggested to Hostetler that public
education served a basic goal
that even the Amish could agree on: to help “a child
make his or her place in
the world.” Hostetler
paused, then said,
“It depends on which world.” On
re-direct examination, Ball came back to the
professor’s
distinction between the two worlds.
“Were you suggesting that Amish education has
as its basic goal the achieving
of Heaven?” Yes,
that is precisely what
I meant. Hostetler’s
testimony provided the trial record Ball would
use in his appeals.
It would be cited
often by judges, and always to the benefit of the
Amish. The
defense also called three members of the New Glarus
Amish community.
When asked why the
Amish felt the need to pull kids out of school after
the eighth grade, one
witness answered: “You got to get that religion in
them. Just
like when you plant a tree—plant it
straight or it will always be crooked.” Fifteen-year
old Frieda Yoder also testified. She
gave short answers, but said that attending high
school would be against her
religious beliefs.
Finally, defendant
Wallace Miller took the stand. He
described his community’s vocational training program
for high-school age
children. The
defense hoped the judge
would see the program as a reasonable alternative to
the high school
curriculum. The
defense took a hit, however, when the judge asked
whether the vocational program had been in place when
the criminal complaint
was filed. Miller
admitted it had not
been. The
defense concluded its case with testimony about what
solid and untroublesome people the Amish were.
A sheriff testified that the Amish were about
the last people he’d ever
expect to see in a line-up. And the
director of the county’s social services agency
affirmed that the Amish were
never a drain on the county’s resources. After
the trial, the judge asked for briefs on the religious
freedom issue. The
state argued that the
Amish were free to believe what they want, but they
had to conform their
conduct to state law for the good of society.
The
defense argued that the law threatened the viability
of
the Amish faith.
As a result, Ball
contended, the state should had to show a compelling
interest in requiring the
Amish to attend school past the eighth grade.
The evidence, he said, showed no such strong
interest existed. Four
months later, Judge Roger Elmer handed down his
decision. He
said that the Amish beliefs
were sincere and that the Amish possessed “exceptional
morality.” But
he worried about the effects a blanket
exemption for the Amish would have on some Amish kids. Kids who
might later abandon the faith, or
who might want to pursue higher education or technical
careers. It
seemed a close case to the judge. So he relied
on a burden of proof.
He said that, as a trial judge, he should
only overturn a state statute if the statute was
unconstitutional beyond a
reasonable doubt—and he had doubts. The
compulsory education law was a reasonable exercise of
governmental power. The
ruling was as William Ball had expected. He vowed to
appeal. The
case made its way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Ball told
the justices, “Society has no right
to conscript the services of a youth into the ranks of
the educated.” The
attorney for the state argued that an
exemption would reduce choices for Amish youth.
“These Amish kids have no other options that to
stay and join the order;
it’s hard for them to get into the mainstream without
an education.” Moreover,
he argued, to exempt only the Amish
would be to favor one religion over others—and that’s
an “establishment of
religion.” The
justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted by a 6
to
1 margin to strike down the state law.
The Court said enforcement of the compulsory
education law could lead
to—quote—“extermination of their religious community.” There was no
compelling state need to enforce
the law against Amish parents. The law, the Court
said, violated the First
Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. The
dissent focused on the rights of the Amish kids to
make their own choices in
the matter. Their
rights, the dissent
argued, had been completely ignored.
They weren’t even represented in court—and they
were being relegated
to—quote—“a life of ignorance.” Yes, the
Amish worry “How are you goin’ to keep ‘em down on the
farm once they’ve seen
Paree”—but don’t people have right to go
to Paris if they wish? Now
it was the state’s turn to appeal. The State
worried Yoder would lead to
chaos. They
feared how other religious
groups and parents with moral objections to the public
school curriculum might
use Yoder. The
U. S. Supreme Court granted cert. There were
Amish settlements in 19
states. The
issue in Yoder was likely to
crop up again in other states. This was
a key factor in the decision of the Court to hear the
case. Yoder’s
attorneys relied heavily in their brief on a recent
Warren
Court precedent.
The 1963 case of Sherbert v Verner
said that state laws
burdening free exercise rights could only stand if the
state could show a compelling state
interest in their
enforcement. Sherbert was
a
sharp departure from an earlier Supreme Court
interpretation of the Free
Exercise Clause.
When a Mormon
polygamist in the Utah Territory challenged his
conviction under a federal
anti-polygamy law, the state dismissed the claim with
magisterial
certainty. Chief
Justice Waite said the
Clause only protected religious beliefs,
not religious conduct. The Chief
Justice wrote that to hold
otherwise would be “to permit every citizen to become
a law unto himself.
Government could exist only in name under such
circumstances.” But all that
changed with Sherbert. The Court
ruled in that case that South
Carolina could not deny unemployment benefits to a
Seventh Day Adventist
because she refused to work on Saturdays, her Sabbath.
Oral
argument in Yoder took place on December 8, 1971. Assistant
Attorney General John Calhoun told
the justices that the compulsory education law was “a
reasonable exercise of
the police power of the state to educate its youth.” He allowed
that the Amish lived honorable
lives. Calhoun said, “In the remorseless daily crunch
of living, the grass on
the Amish side of the fence looks green and much
greener than ours at times.” But, he
argued, “What is needed is more
education to cope with the problems of society, not
less.” William
Ball emphasized the threat that compulsory education
laws posed to the Amish faith. And he
pointed to a nearly complete lack of evidence that
Amish were harming the
state’s interests in any way. Ball said “not one
witness, not one scrap of
evidence” suggested that the state had a compelling
interest in keeping Amish
kids in school beyond age 14. He
seemed to have a friendly audience. The justices
threw him softball questions and
he batted them well enough. Oddly, no
justice really pressed him on what many thought was
the state’s strongest
argument: the adverse effects an exemption would have
on life options for the
Amish kids pulled out of school. Chief
Justice Warren Burger wrote the Court’s opinion. To him it
seemed, as one wag put it, the
Amish kids were the kind of kids he hoped his
grandchildren would become. He wrote,
“The evidence showed that the Amish
have an excellent record as law-abiding and generally
self-sufficient members
of society.” He praised “their devotion to a life in
harmony with nature and
the soil.” The
Chief Justice saw the case as involving only the
rights
of Amish parents, not Amish children. “It is the
parents who are subject to
prosecution here,” he noted. The state
had failed he said, to show any harm to the public
safety, peace, order, or
welfare” that might come from exempting the Amish from
the compulsory education
law. The
free exercise rights of the
parents trump the state’s interests. Justice
William O. Douglas wrote a partial dissent. “It is the
future of the student, not the
future of the parents, that is imperiled by today's
decision,” he wrote. “If a
parent keeps his child out of school beyond the grade
school, then the child
will be forever barred from entry into the new and
amazing world of diversity
that we have today.”
He worried that
children will be—quote—“harnessed to the Amish way of
life” and have their
lives “stunted and deformed.” He argued that children
“should be given an
opportunity to be heard before the State gives the
exemption which we honor
today.” The
outcome in Yoder should have come as no surprise. The Amish
were sympathetic defendants. The
exemption they asked for was relatively inoffensive—as
opposed to an exemption
from polygamy law or drug laws. And the
state had not presented as strong a case as it could
have. Reporters
found Jonas Yoder unloading grain on his
farm. He
seemed uncomfortable answering
their questions.
He said, “I feel we had
a miracle made for us, and I don’t feel like making
words.” He added that he
was “glad to have it over with” and “wished it had
been anybody else” but him. Yoder’s
attorney, William Ball, called the decision “a great
victory for religious liberty.” In the
years that followed, the Yoder precedent proved
helpful to conservative
Christians seeking legal protection for home
education. In
the mid-1970s, there was an exodus of Amish families
from
New Glarus. Over
two-thirds of the
community departed.
Some said the hilly
country around New Glarus made for hard farming. Some said
state sanitary regulations had made
dairy farming too difficult. Others
suggested that technology, and even debate over the
Yoder litigation, had led
to religious division. Jonas
Yoder and his family packed up in 1973 and moved to
Missouri. Wallace
Miller and his family
left three years later for Evansville, Wisconsin. Even
for fans of liberty, Yoder is a difficult case. Yoder pitted
against each other two liberty
interests: the liberty of Amish parents to shape their
children’s values and
protect their religious community and the liberty of
Amish children to make
fundamental choices about the direction of their
lives. Yoder
is a case where communitarians and egalitarians are
likely to see things differently.
Communitarians stress the importance of
strengthening private
associations and institutions as buffers against the
power of the state.
In their view, the stronger the roles of
family, churches, and other associations, the more
secure liberty is.
And they see Yoder as rightly decided. Egalitarians,
on the other hand, prefer to maximize
individual choice and emphasize self-realization. And they are
uncomfortable with a decision
that leaves Amish youths with few options.
It’s hard to work in Silicon Valley, to become
as astronaut or a concert
violinist if your formal education ended after eighth
grade. |