The Right To Direct The Education Of Your Children Turns 100

Over 100 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling that ensured that American parents would be in the driver’s seat when it came to educating their children. It is a decision that both established what education in the U.S. looks like today and where it might be headed in the future.

In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Court decision struck down an Oregon law that forced all children to attend a public school. To modern ears, a law like that might seem extreme. But at the time, the idea that the government should have a monopoly on education was popular in certain states and could have become the model nationwide had the Court not sided against Oregon lawmakers.

The Oregon law was motivated by hostility to Catholic schools. In fact, the Ku Klux Klan was a chief supporter of the measure. The state wanted to eliminate all private alternatives to the public education system. With their schools facing closure, the Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, an order of Catholic nuns who operated schools in Oregon (and continue to sponsor schools to this day); and Hill Military Academy, a secular private school, separately sued the governor before the law could go into effect.

The Supreme Court handed down its decision in June 1925, invalidating Oregon’s law under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court relied on another decision that it had issued only two years earlier: Meyer v. Nebraska. In that case, the Court struck down a Nebraska law that tried to criminalize teaching children a foreign language before high school. Robert Meyer was tried and convicted of teaching a 10-year-old how to read the Bible in German.

Today, Meyer and Pierce are recognized as bulwarks of the right of parents to make the decisions concerning their children’s education. In Meyer, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right of parents “to control the education of their own,” and in Pierce, it similarly recognized “the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.” The most famous line in Pierce states in clear terms that, “The child is not the mere creature of the state.”

Notably, these two lawsuits were not brought by parents, but by educators. And the opinion rested on the rights of both groups. In Meyer, for example, the Court emphasized the right of Robert Meyer to teach and to contract with parents for his services.

In Pierce, meanwhile, the Court stressed the business and property rights of the Holy Names Sisters and Hill Military Academy. This business and property, the Court explained, was “threatened with destruction through the unwarranted compulsion” that Oregon was “exercising over present and prospective patrons” of the schools. As the Court noted, the “successful conduct of” schools “requires long time contracts with teachers and parents.” “[P]

rotection against” Oregon’s “interference” with these contracts—and against “the consequent destruction of [the schools’] business and property”—was therefore warranted.

While the continued existence of private schools in Oregon and across the country rests in these cases, the courts have mostly overlooked the rights of education providers since 1925. It’s past time for a revival.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of education entrepreneurship. Microschools, learning pods, hybrid schools, and other innovations are delivering desperately needed opportunity for children who, for whatever reason, are not well served by public schools.

Meyer and Pierce should remind us that government often stands in the way of educational opportunity. Just like Robert Meyer and the Holy Names Sisters, today’s education entrepreneurs often find themselves stymied; not by outright bans, but by regulations designed to maintain a one-size-fits-all approach to education. These regulations come in all shapes and sizes: municipal zoning laws that restrict innovative educational uses of private property; licensing laws that treat microschools like daycares; onerous curricular laws that micromanage private instruction down to the minute. The list goes on.

A century on, most Americans don’t think about these landmark Supreme Court decisions, although they likely agree with the idea that the government should not force every child to attend a state-run school. The federal courts don’t think about these precedents much anymore either; but that can change. Education entrepreneurs can look to them to protect parents’ rights to choose an education and educators’ right to provide an innovative service.

That might require some courage. Meyer and the Holy Names Sisters stood up against popular laws that stirred up strong feelings. But their courage was rewarded and they’ve blazed a trail that can be followed.