Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court striking down an Oregon statute that required all children to attend public school.

[1] The decision significantly expanded coverage of the Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to recognize personal civil liberties.

[3][4][5] The Compulsory Education Act, before amendment, had required Oregon children between eight and sixteen years of age to attend public school.

Among the strongest backers of the Act were the Ku Klux Klan, the Orange Order and other anti-Catholic organizations seeking to capitalize on the wave of anti-Catholicism sweeping the nation.

Their case alleged only secondarily that the law infringed on Fourteenth Amendment rights regarding protection of property (namely, the school's contracts with the families).

Appellants, law officers of the state and county, have publicly announced that the Act of November 7, 1922, is valid and have declared their intention to enforce it.

Finally, they argued that since the law was not scheduled to take effect until September of the following year, the suits were brought prematurely — to protect against a possible coming danger, not to rectify a current problem.

The appellees, represented by Hall S. Lusk, replied that they were not contesting the right of the state to monitor their children's education, only its right to absolute control of their choice of educational system: "No question is raised concerning the power of the state reasonably to regulate all schools, to inspect, supervise and examine them, their teachers and pupils; to require that all children of proper age attend some school, that teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition, that certain studies plainly essential to good citizenship must be taught, and that nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare."

He stated that this responsibility belonged to the child's parents or guardians, and that the ability to make such a choice was a "liberty" protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

However, citing a number of relevant business and property law cases, he concluded that the enactment of the revised Act was not "proper power" in this sense, and constituted unlawful interference with the freedom of both schools and families.

In response to the claims by the appellants that the suits were premature, attempting to prevent rather than to rectify a problem, Justice McReynolds simply referred them to the evidence provided by the appellees showing that the schools were already suffering falling enrollments.

Because the statute Pierce v. Society of Sisters struck down was primarily intended to eliminate parochial schools, Justice Anthony Kennedy has suggested that the case could have been decided on First Amendment grounds.