Adjudicating What Yoder Left Unresolved: Religious Rights for Minor Children after Danforth and Carey

In Wisconsin v. Yoder,' the Supreme Court held that a schoolattendance law requiring parents to send their children to school until the age of sixteen violated Amish parents' free exercise of religion, and infringed their right to direct the religious upbringig of their children.2 Over Justice Douglas' partial dissent,3 the Court limited its analysis to consideration of the constitutional rights of the parents as weighed against the state interest in requirig attendance in school, and specifically did not broach the subject of what constitutionally protected religious rights children might have distinct from those of their parents.4 The Court decided that it was unnecessary to consider the possible constitutional rights of the children because they were not parties to a prosecution of their parents for failure to send them to school. The case, moreover, did not involve any attempt by the parents to override their children's effort to attend school.5 Yoder, therefore, did not answer the ques-