Meyer and Pierce were SDP decisions during the Lochner era. Are they still good law today? Here is an excerpt from my forthcoming article on school choice and the First Amendment:
To the extent that Meyer and Pierce are substantive due process decisions, they remain valid today under Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the Court made clear that its decision overruling its precedents creating the abortion liberty should in no way be understood “to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” In any event, as Justice Douglas declared in his opinion for the Court in Griswold v. Connecticut, the right of parents to educate a child outside the public schools “in a school of the parents’ choice” is perhaps best understood as arising under the First Amendment. As Douglas put it, “the State may not, consistently with the spirit of the First Amendment, contract the spectrum of available knowledge.” In other words, the First Amendment guarantees the right of parents to protect their children’s right to freedom of thought and belief-formation from being standardized by laws restricting these rights.
Does the monopoly of funding imposed by the government school monopoly impose a heavy burden on the right of parents to eduacte their children outside the government schools?
No comments:
Post a Comment