Robert T. Meyer

(1878-1972) lived at Hampton, Hamilton County, and in Pierce. Educator, served as a teacher and principal of Lutheran parochial schools from 1898 to 1942; known for successfully contesting Nebraska's 1919 law banning all foreign language teaching in elementary schools in the state before U.S. Supreme Court in 1923; the Meyer vs State of Nebraska landmark case was the first time that the Court invoked the doctrine of substantive due process of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect personal liberties, and it served in the latter half of the 20th century as a precedent for substantive due process cases, including the 1973 Roe vs Wade decision that invalidated anti-abortion statutes. Consult New York Times, February 24, 1923, p. 5 and Arthur F. Mullen, Western Democrat (Wilfred Funk, 1940) 206-226 and University of Cincinnati Law Review, Vol 57, No 1 (1968) 125-204 and Nebraska History, Vol 56 (Spring 1975) 137-144 and Sunday /Omaha/ World Herald Magazine of the Midlands, June 15, 1986, pp. 4-6.

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