Meyer v. Nebraska
The Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law that banned teaching foreign languages to schoolchildren who had not yet passed the eighth grade, ruling that it violated the constitutional liberty of teachers, parents, and children.
The decision recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment's protection of liberty covers more than physical freedom — it includes the right to pursue a livelihood, gain knowledge, and raise and educate one's own children as parents see fit.
“The protection of the Constitution extends to all, to those who speak other languages as well as to those born with English on the tongue.”
The Court rejects the idea that constitutional liberty applies only to English speakers.
How it got here: A Nebraska trial court convicted Meyer under the state law; the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed; Meyer brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Robert Meyer taught reading in German to a ten-year-old student at a Lutheran parochial school in Nebraska. A 1919 state law made it a crime to teach any subject to a child in any language other than English unless the child had already passed the eighth grade. Meyer was charged and convicted for teaching German from a book of Bible stories to a child who had not reached that grade level.
The question before the Court
Could Nebraska make it a crime to teach a young child a foreign language, like German, in school before eighth grade?
Why it matters
Teachers of foreign languages could keep working, and parents \u2014 especially immigrant families \u2014 regained the ability to have their children taught languages like German outside of public school curricula. The ruling also gave later generations a legal foundation for arguing that parents, not the government, have the primary right to direct how their children are raised and educated.
What changes now
The Nebraska Supreme Court's judgment was reversed, and the case was sent back for further proceedings consistent with the Court's ruling, effectively ending the prosecution and invalidating enforcement of the law against similar language instruction. The decision was a final ruling on the merits, not a temporary order, and it left standing Nebraska's separate power to require English instruction and compel school attendance generally.
What this does not decide
The Court made clear it was not questioning the state's power to require that schools teach in English, to compel school attendance, or to set curricula for schools it funds and operates. Its ruling was limited to striking down the specific ban on teaching foreign languages to young children.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Holmes
Justice Holmes dissented, joined by Justice Sutherland. The text notes that his separate opinion appears in a companion case reported afterward, so its specific reasoning is not reproduced in this record.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court held that the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause is not limited to freedom from physical restraint, but also covers the right to work in ordinary occupations, gain useful knowledge, marry, raise a family, and worship freely.
- Under the Court's approach, a law restricting this liberty is unconstitutional if it is arbitrary or has no reasonable relationship to a legitimate purpose the state is allowed to pursue — and courts, not just legislatures, get to check whether that relationship exists.
- The Court found that teaching a child German was not inherently harmful, and that both the teacher's occupation of instructing in that language and a parent's choice to have a child taught it fall within this protected liberty.
- The Court acknowledged Nebraska's stated goal of fostering a unified, English-speaking citizenry, but found that goal did not excuse the ban, since simply knowing another language was not shown to threaten health, morals, or civic understanding.
- Because no wartime emergency or other pressing danger justified banning foreign-language instruction to young children, the Court concluded the law was an arbitrary restriction with no reasonable connection to any legitimate state interest, making it unconstitutional as applied to Meyer.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Adams v. Tanner
The Court relied on this case's principle that occasional misuse of an otherwise useful occupation does not justify banning it entirely.