Wisconsin v. Yoder’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
1,425 federal appellate · 540 district · 1,966 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,748 later decisions (211 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), Troxel v. Granville (2000)
1,425 federal appellate · 540 district · 1,966 state decisions — followed in 50 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Gault · Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher · Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District
Cited together with Sherbert v. Verner · Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary Same · Thomas v. Review Board of the Indiana Employment Security Division · Prince v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts · Meyer v. State of Nebraska
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 5,748 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A way of life, however virtuous and admirable, may not be interposed as a barrier to reasonable state regulation ... if it is based on purely secular considerations; to have the protection of the Religion Clauses, the claims must be rooted in religious belief.”
62 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“only those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion.”
57 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“it must appear either that the State does not deny the free exercise of religious belief by its requirement, or that there is a state interest of sufficient magnitude to override the interest claiming protection under the Free Exercise Clause.”
48 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.