Meyer v. Nebraska: What a Century-Old Case Says About Liberty, Education, and the Direction We're Headed

A century ago, in the small town of Hampton, Nebraska, a seemingly minor case about a German teacher set a legal precedent that continues to shape our understanding of liberty, education, and even personal autonomy. That case was Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), and its echoes are louder than ever.

In 1923, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in Meyer v. Nebraska, a case rooted in post-WWI anti-German sentiment but with constitutional implications that still resonate today. The case began when Robert Meyer, a Lutheran schoolteacher, was convicted under a Nebraska law that made it illegal to teach any subject in a foreign language to students who hadn’t yet completed the eighth grade. Meyer had been teaching German to a 10-year-old student in a private parochial school.

This law was part of a broader wave of cultural suppression fueled by wartime nationalism and fear of divided loyalties. Legislators believed that linguistic diversity—particularly languages associated with recent immigrants or wartime enemies—threatened a unified American identity.

The Supreme Court struck the law down. Writing for the majority, Justice James C. McReynolds held that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by interfering with the liberty of parents and teachers to direct the education of children. The Court declared that "liberty" under the Fourteenth Amendment wasn’t limited to freedom from physical restraint. It included broader individual rights, such as the right to engage in common occupations, acquire useful knowledge, marry, establish a home, raise children, and worship freely.

While the substantive due process doctrine had its controversial origins in cases focused on economic regulations, Meyer marked a pivotal shift, applying it to protect more personal, fundamental liberties.

This was a landmark moment. Not because it was about German classes, but because it expanded our understanding of what "liberty" actually means. It was one of the first major recognitions of substantive due process—the idea that the Constitution protects certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if those rights aren’t explicitly listed.

The implications have been huge. Meyer paved the way for decisions like Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), which struck down an Oregon law requiring all children to attend public schools, and decades later, it underpinned Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Roe v. Wade (1973), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). In each of those, the Court relied on the idea that liberty includes deeply personal choices: how we raise our children, who we love, what medical decisions we make, and how we define family.

But just over 100 years after Meyer, we’re watching many of those liberties come under threat again.

We’re seeing rising efforts to restrict what can be taught in schools—not in German this time, but around race, gender identity, and history. Parents and teachers are once again at the center of a national debate about who gets to decide what children learn. Nationally, we’re seeing political movements and figures advocating for curriculum restrictions, book bans, and legislative efforts like “Don’t Say Gay” laws and bans on teaching so-called critical race theory. These efforts mirror the same instinct to control and homogenize culture that underpinned the Nebraska law in Meyer.

Meanwhile, the doctrine of substantive due process—the very framework that gave us so many landmark civil rights decisions—has come under open attack. The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization reversed Roe v. Wade, directly questioning the legitimacy of substantive due process as a constitutional doctrine. Justice Thomas, in his concurrence, even suggested the Court should reconsider cases like Lawrence and Obergefell.

So here we are: more than a century after Meyer, still fighting about who gets to decide what liberty looks like in America.

The lesson from Meyer isn’t just about foreign language instruction in Nebraska. It’s a reminder that liberty means more than being free from handcuffs or jail. It means the ability to live your life according to your own values—to speak your language, love who you love, teach your child what matters to you, and define your family without government interference.

We shouldn’t have to relearn these lessons every hundred years. But if we do, let’s at least be honest about where we started—in a small Nebraska classroom, with a teacher who believed that liberty included the freedom to learn. And it reminds us that the fight for these essential freedoms, so central to American identity, found some of its earliest and most profound battles right here in Nebraska.