Court Opinion

ID: 9862669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 01:44:32.362512+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:30:33.109515
License: Public Domain

Douglas and Brock, JJ.,
concurring specially: We concur in the court’s holding that due process was denied these plaintiffs but cannot agree with the overly restrictive approach to RSA 193:3 by the majority.
First, some background. Historically the idea of compulsory schooling was conceived in the Protestant Reformation by Martin Luther and fostered throughout Europe as a device to suppress dissent and compel adherence to the dominant religious forces. W. Rickenbacker, The Twelve-Year Sentence 11-13 (1974). In contrast, the more individualistic and freedom-loving American colonists utilized private and voluntary education as the norm. See id. at 13; City of Concord v. New Testament Baptist Church, 118 N.H. 56, 59-60, 382 A.2d 377, 379-80 (1978). While the first compulsory literacy law was enacted by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay’s Puritans in 1642, it was not until 1789 that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts established the first comprehensive, statewide system of compulsory schooling. W. Rickenbacker, supra, at 14. Such nineteenth century professional educationists as Horace Mann and Calvin Stowe set about to require universal American public education backed up by governmental compulsion through use of truancy laws. Id.; see also N. Edwards, The Courts And The Public School 519 (1971). Indeed, one proponent of such concepts, Newton Bateman, who was heavily influenced by Prussian thought, even wrote that because the government’s “right of eminent domain” extends over the “minds of souls and bodies” of individuals, *768education cannot be entrusted to “the caprices and contingencies” of individual parents. W. RlCKENBACKER, supra, at 23.
The ultimate step in the process of standardizing all American education occurred in Oregon in 1922 when all private schools were banned and children were compelled to attend public schools. The implicit intent of this action was to promote uniformity by forbidding ethnic and religious groups to educate their children in a manner they desired. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), however, the United States Supreme Court stated that “the child is not the mere creature of the State” and concluded that Oregon had interfered with the “liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control. . . .” Id. at 534-35. The Court held that such interference violated the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment.
Similar protection of the parents’ substantive due process right to control the upbringing of their children was recognized in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923), in which the court invalidated a State statute that prohibited teaching of modern foreign languages.
More recently in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), the Court concluded that a State could not compel Amish children to attend high school in violation of their religious beliefs. Although Yoder was a first amendment decision, language in the opinion, reminiscent of that in Pierce and Meyer, suggests that parents may have a fundamental right to control the education of their children:
“The history and culture of Western civilization reflect a strong tradition of parental concern for the nurture and upbringing of their children. This primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition....”
Id. at 232. This court specifically cited this quotation in reaffirming the fundamental rights of parents to the custody, care and nurture of their children. State v. Robert H.-, 118 N.H. 713, 715, 393 A.2d 1387, 1388 (1978). Indeed, at common law the parents’ authority over the education of their children was unquestionably a natural right which arose out of those parental responsibilities. See 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries, 450-53 (1809); People v. Stanley, 81 Colo. 276, 280-81, 255 P. 610, 613 (1927); N. Edwards, supra, at 519. Thus, while the State may adopt a policy requiring that children be educated, it does not have the unlimited power to require they be educated in a certain way at a certain place. N. Edwards, supra, at 521.
*769Home education is an enduring American tradition and right having produced such notables as Abraham Lincoln, see A. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln 63 (1928) (one year of schooling); Woodrow Wilson, see R. Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, 37 (1927) (little formal schooling prior to college); and Thomas Edison, see M. Josephson, Edison at 20-23 (1959) (basically taught at home by his mother). Currently, it is estimated that 10,000 children nationwide are being taught at home. Morton, The Home-Education Controversy, Boston Magazine, October 1979, at 213; Teaching Kids at Home, 81 Current Events, March 1, 1982, at 4.
Recently, our neighboring State of Vermont held that requiring a child to attend public school or else be receiving an “equivalent education” could not be read to require that attendance be exclusively confined to “approved schools.” Said the Vermont court:
“[T]he state would be hard put to constitutionally justify limiting the right of normal, unhandicapped youngsters to attendance at ‘approved’ institutions.”
State v. LaBarge, 134 Vt. 276, 280, 357 A.2d 121, 124 (1976). Thus, approval requirements for non-public school education may not unnecessarily interfere with traditional parental rights. Bristow, Private Schools in Vermont: The “Equivalency Exception” to Compulsory Public School Attendance — State v. LaBarge, 2 Vt. L.R. 205, 211 (1977). It is with this discussion and background in mind that the school board must consider the parents’ request and apply the State regulations of the 1982-83 school year.