Meyer V. Nebraska - Facts and Arguments

Facts and Arguments

On May 25, 1920, Robert T. Meyer, while an instructor in Zion Parochial School, a one-room schoolhouse in Hampton, Nebraska, taught the subject of reading in the German language to 10-year-old Raymond Parpart, a fourth-grader, the Hamilton County Attorney entered the classroom and discovered Parpart reading from the Bible in German. He charged Meyer with violating the Siman Act.

Meyer was tried and convicted in the district court for Hamilton county, Nebraska, and fined $25. The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed his conviction by a vote of 4 to 2. The majority thought the law a proper response to "the baneful effects" of allowing immigrants to educate their children in their mother tongue, with results "inimical to our own safety." The dissent called the Siman Act the work of "crowd psychology."

Meyer appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. His lead attorney was Arthur Mullen, an Irish Catholic and a prominent Democrat, who had earlier failed in his attempt to obtain an injunction against enforcement of the Siman Act from the Nebraska State Supreme Court. Oral arguments expressed conflicting interpretations of the World War I experience. Mullen attributed the law to "hatred, national bigotry and racial prejudice engendered by the World War." Opposing counsel countered that "it is the ambition of the State to have its entire population 100 per cent. American."