Meyer v. Nebraska Totally Explained

Everything about Meyer V Nebraska totally explained

Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923), was a U.S. Supreme Court case which held that a 1919 Nebraska law prohibiting the teaching of foreign languages to school children before high school unconstitutionally violated the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Facts

Robert T. Meyer, the Plaintiff, was tried and convicted in the district court for Hamilton county, Nebraska, under allegations which charged that on May 25, 1920, while an instructor in Zion Parochial School he unlawfully taught the subject of reading in the German language to Raymond Parpart, a child of 10 years, who hadn't attained and successfully passed the eighth grade. The information is based upon an act relating to the teaching of foreign languages in the state of Nebraska, approved April 9, 1919, which includes the principle section "No person, individually or as a teacher, shall, in any private, denominational, parochial or public school, teach any subject to any person in any language than the English language."
The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed, and Meyer appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Majority opinion

In his decision, Justice McReynolds, stated that although the state "may do much . . . in order to improve the quality of its citizens," the statute exceeded "the limitations on the power of the state and conflict[ed] with rights assured" to Meyer. The "liberty" protected by the Due Process clause "[w]ithout doubt...denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized…as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

Dissent

Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and George Sutherland dissented. Their dissenting opinion, written by Holmes, can be found in the companion case of Bartels v. State of Iowa.

In later jurisprudence

Meyer, along with Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), is often cited as one of the first instances in which the U.S. Supreme Court engaged in substantive due process in the area of civil liberties. Justice Kennedy has speculated that both of those cases might have been written differently nowadays: "Pierce and Meyer, had they been decided in recent times, may well have been grounded upon First Amendment principles protecting freedom of speech, belief, and religion." Current Supreme Court doctrine prohibits the judiciary from using the Due Process Clause instead of an applicable specific constitutional provision (such as the First Amendment) when one is available.

In popular culture

In the fictional drama The West Wing the case was mentioned as an example of the Supreme Court ruling in an activist manner to preserve democratic freedoms promoted, but not explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution. Labelling the case in this way is a matter of opinion. The mention occurred in season 6, episode 14: "The Wake Up Call."

Further Information

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