Remembering the Supreme Court case that saved Catholic education in America 

June 1 marked the 100th anniversary of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the landmark Supreme Court case that preserved Catholic education in America and established the foundation for present-day legal discourse on parental rights and school choice.

Decided on June 1, 1925, Pierce v. Society of Sisters blocked a proposed amendment to an Oregon statute that would have eliminated the rights of parents to enroll their children in private schools. The amendment, challenged by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, who ran parochial schools in Oregon, primarily targeted those schools and was notably backed by organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.

The court’s natural-law based opinion, written by Associate Justice James Clark McReynolds, famously stated: “The child is not the mere creature of the state.”

“The natural law-rooted conception of the relationship between child and parent … is deeply rooted in our nation’s constitutional order,” preeminent legal scholar and moral philosopher Robert P. George said in a speech at a commemorative event sponsored by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., last week.

“[Pierce v. Society of Sisters] illustrates the fight to protect and preserve parents’ fundamental rights to direct their children’s upbringing and education,” George said, which “is nothing new when it comes to the American story.”

In his address, George referred to a current case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, where Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim parents are suing the Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education for not allowing them to opt their children out of course material that promotes homosexuality, transgenderism, and other elements of radical gender ideology.

The parents argue that the curriculum, which includes reading material for children as young as 3 and 4 years old, violates their First Amendment right to direct the religious upbringing of their children.

“It is in cases like Mahmoud,” George continued, “that we see the real reason that progressives are so keen for organized institutions of the state, at least when they are dominated by ideological allies of social and cultural progressivism, to share, and eventually override, as Montgomery County sought to do by banning the opt-outs, parental authority with actual parents.”

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