Meyer v. Nebraska

Facts of the Case

Meyer involved the constitutionality of a post-World War I statute that the legislature of Nebraska enacted prohibiting instruction in any language other than English to any student who had not passed the eighth grade. This prohibition applied to all private, denominational, parochial, and public schools in the state. Any teacher who violated this statute could be charged with a misdemeanor and, if convicted, fined from $25 to $100 and confined in the county jail for up to 30 days.

Meyer, a teacher in a Nebraska parochial school, was charged and convicted under the statute for teaching reading in the German language to a 10-year-old student who had not yet completed the eighth grade. The Supreme Court of Nebraska upheld Meyer's conviction, determining that the statute under which he was convicted was a valid exercise of state police power. The court affirmed as reasonable the statute's purpose of requiring that “the English language should become the mother tongue of all children reared in this state.” By seeking to prevent foreigners who had taken residence in this country from rearing and educating their children in the language of their native land, the court said, the state was trying to prevent the harmful effect that children taught in their native language might be inculcated in “ideas and sentiments foreign to the best interests of this country” (pp. 397–398).

The Court's Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed Meyer's criminal conviction. In effect, the Court found two separate but related liberty clause claims, that of Meyer to practice his occupation of teaching and that of the parents to engage Meyer as the teacher for their children. While the Court recognized that a state's police power includes the physical, mental, and moral improvement of its citizens, it observed that protection under the U.S. Constitution extends to those who speak other languages as well as to those born with English as their native tongue. Although the Court acknowledged that the State of Nebraska framed its concern for a homogeneous people by a post-World War I aversion “toward every character of truculent adversaries” (p. 402), it nonetheless held that the state's chosen statutory means to accomplish its purpose, infringing on the Liberty [Page 546]Clause rights of the teacher and the parents, exceeded its police power.

The Supreme Court later cited Meyer as a precedent in Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary and Wisconsin v. Yoder for its recognition of the Liberty Clause right of parents to direct their children's education. However, the Court also quoted Meyer for its statement regarding the Tenth Amendment's implied power of states to regulate education. In Meyer, the Court expressed the view in dictum

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