[2] The Siman Act had been passed after World War I as part of the English only movement and during a time of pervasive anti-German sentiment, atrocity propaganda, and spy scare paranoia promoted by U.S. news media.

Nebraska was one of 22 states that had enacted laws banning or restricting foreign language instruction based on broader nativist sentiments to promote assimilation into American culture and society.

[6] This subsequently developed into the legal principle of substantive due process that would underpin decisions related to same-sex marriage, racial discrimination, and reproductive rights.

On May 25, 1920, Robert T. Meyer, while an instructor in Zion Lutheran 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 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".

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.

Writing for the majority, Justice McReynolds stated that while it was not necessary "to define with exactness" the liberties that were protected by the Due Process Clause, its protections "[w]ithout doubt" not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men".

Analyzing in that context the liberty of the teacher and of parents with respect to their children, McReynolds wrote: "Practically, education of the young is only possible in schools conducted by especially qualified persons who devote themselves thereto.

And further: "Evidently the Legislature has attempted materially to interfere with the calling of modern language teachers, with the opportunities of pupils to acquire knowledge, and with the power of parents to control the education of their own."

The most immediate significance of Meyer was in derailing the powerful nationwide movement, motivated largely by anti-Catholicism, to destroy parochial education by requiring all children to attend public schools.

[11] The doctrine of substantive due process provided the basis for future civil rights decisions of the Court, including Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Lawrence v. Texas.

Justice Kennedy speculated in 2000 that both of those cases might have been written differently nowadays: "Pierce and Meyer, had they been decided in recent times, may well have been grounded upon First Amendment principles protecting freedom of speech, belief, and religion.