Yoder Revisited: Why the Landmark Amish Schooling Case Could—And Should —Be Overturned

Abstract

IN 1972, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder, which held that the state could not compel Amish and conservative Mennonite children to attend school past the eighth grade under compulsory education laws. 1 This ruling has had a profound and continuing impact on the lives of Amish-raised individuals. Over the past four decades, tens of thousands of individuals raised in Plain communities 2 have been denied a high school education due to the Yoder decision. 3 Much has changed in the four decades since Yoder was decided. Many in the legal world know that Free Exercise jurisprudence has experienced significant upheaval since the Court handed down Yoder, but far fewer are aware that Plain communities have also gone through major transformations during that same period. The evolution of both Amish society and Free Exercise jurisprudence since the Court decided Yoder call for a reevaluation of the decision. Though it is relatively unusual for a Supreme Court decision to be overturned outright, the Court has established a general procedure for determining whether to abandon prior precedent. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the Court laid out a "series of prudential and pragmatic considerations" that guide the Court when it reexamines a prior holding - considerations that are "designed to test the consistency of overruling a prior decision with the ideal of the rule of law, and to gauge the respective costs of reaffirming and overruling a prior case." 4 These four considerations are: (1) ...