Court Opinion

ID: 8032669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-09 03:17:14.976343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:37:01.356275
License: Public Domain

Morrissey, C. J.,
dissenting.
Chapter 61, Laws 1921, in the main, is calculated to prohibit and penalize the teaching, in a school, of languages other than English. The history of the ages dead and gone reveals that every forward step in science and philosophy met with opposition and oftentimes with persecution, but, notwithstanding this opposition, learning spread, the human mind expanded, and knowledge of the arts and sciences reached the multitude. We have been wont to look upon the proscriptions of the past with charity because of the age in which they occurred, but, now, in the twentieth century, the majority opinion sustains a statute as a reasonable exercise of the police power that proscribes the teaching of modern languages, in a school, although it sanctions the teaching of such languages if done by a private tutor, or a parent, in the home. If the teaching of such languages is vicious and harmful, it must be so when done by a private tutor, or by a parent, in the home. If not hurtful to the state when taught by a private tutor or by a parent, in the home, how can it be said to be harmful *455to the state w leu taught in a school, when such teaching is not permitted to impair the work of the child, in the common branches of learning. I cannot regard as a reasonable exercise of the police power a provision which arbitrarily forbids the acquisition of useful learning — learning that is not harmful in itself, learning that the well to do parent may employ a private tutor to impart to his child, or that the cultured parent may personally impart to his child, if not done in a school. The police power has never been held to extend to the prohibition of acts not injurious to society or which cannot reasonably be said to be harmful to the public welfare. It is an arbitrary classification which reason will not support. The provision declaring the English language to be the official language of the state and the provisions requiring the teaching of that language in all schools of the state are proper, and no person complains of them or questions their validity, but those provisions that prohibit the teaching of other languages, in a school, even though such teaching does not interfere with the school course prescribed by proper authority, in my judgment, violate the provisions of both the state and federal Constitutions. I, therefore, dissent from the holding announced and adhere to the opinion of this court in Nebraska District of Evangelical Lutheran Synod v. McKelvie, 104 Neb. 93, and to the dissenting opinion in Meyer v. State, 107 Neb. 657.