A Victory for Academic Freedom

The Nebraska Ban on Language Instruction.

In April 1919 the Nebraska General Assembly enacted a law that forbade the instruction of any modern foreign language to elementary-school pupils in that state. On 25 May 1920 Robert T. Meyer, an ordained Lutheran minister, taught a German class to some students of the Zion Parochial Grammar School. The children were Lutherans and mostly of German ancestry. After Meyer was brought before Hamilton County District Court and fined $200, his lawyers appealed the conviction on the grounds that he and the students had been denied due process as stipulated in the Fourteenth Amendment. The case of Meyer v. State of Nebraska was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on 3 February 1924.

The Supreme Court Ruling.

Four months later the usually conservative Taft Court handed down a notably liberal decision. A majority of eight justices, with George Sunderland reading the...

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