^{Sketch of young Amishman by Beulah Hostetler, widow of John Hostetler), duplicated with her permission)}

’72: Yoder in Wisconsin, page 4

testify. (Eventually scheduling conflicts prevented Littell from testifying, but the U. S. Supreme Court was influenced, I believe, by his writings introduced into evidence.)

The legendary case went forward, much as if fore-ordained so to do. I doubt that any expert witness for the Amish asked for payment of travel costs, let alone a fee. Ball contributed enormously as lead attorney while reaping little more than expense reimbursement, if even that.

Freida Yoder, an Amish fifteen-year-old not attending a regular high school, testified timidly, briefly, and effectively. The public school superintendent responsible for prosecuting the Amish asserted, as if living on another planet, that the Amish refusal to patronize regular high schools would produce juvenile delinquency, crime, unemployment, and welfare dependency. The former sheriff and the director of county social services cited evidence contradicting what the apparently uneducated school superintendent claimed. I testified that the effects in adulthood of the Amish educational system should inspire public educators to learn from it, not attack it.

Despite all evidence in their behalf, the Amish lost in the trial court, though the judge said his decision was “reluctant” and levied a token fine of five dollars per defendant. Even if he was convinced that Wisconsin’s compulsory school attendance statute unconstitutionally violated Amish religious liberty, legal tradition says it is not the business of lower courts to overturn statutory law.

Next, a legal quirk took the case to the Green County Circuit Court, where the Amish lost again. On appeal they triumphed in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Wisconsin bureaucrats, defying their legislature’s advice to let the matter rest, appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously for the Amish in an opinion cited almost endlessly since then.

The U. S. Supreme Court, which rarely does so, identified Hostetler and me by name while quoting our testimony as a basis for its decision, as did Justice Harry Blackmun in his dissenting opinion. Later Attorney Ball wrote that I had turned the case into a victory (see his letter in Photocopies). I may have helped, but top credit for compelling testimony belongs to John Hostetler. As Shawn Peters observes, “it is difficult to overstate the importance of Hostetler’s testimony.”

We need more people like Hostetler. We need more people with the depth of understanding reflected in his widow’s (Beulah Hostetler’s) drawings. Much of John’s success may reflect her quiet assistance.

We need dissenting groups like the Amish to remind us that mainstream culture is not, fortunately, the only way to live in the modern world. For encouraging indications that the Amish have protection now, see the 2003 revision of The Amish and the State by Donald B. Kraybill, who continues with distinction the work of his former professor, John A. Hostetler.

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Copyright © 2004 Donald Erickson

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