McCollum v. Board of Education
333 US 203 (Decided March 8, 1948)
Bill Long
At issue in this case was the constitutionality of an Illinois released time education program, where students who desired would receive weekly religious instruction in their public schools during the school day, at no charge to the school district, by denominational teachers selected by the denominations but approved by the local school officials. Justice Hugo Black, speaking for an 8-1 majority, held that the petition for mandamus brought by Vashti McCollum against the Champaign County school board and denied by the state courts, must be reinstated and the lower court actions reversed.
Inasmuch as the Court would uphold the constitutionality of released time four years later, the facts of its administration here became the crucial issue. In addition to those facts mentioned above, the program required that instruction be conducted in the regular classroom of the school building and that students who did not choose to take the religious instruction were required to leave the classrooms and go to some other place in the school building for their "secular" studies. Reports of presence or absence of students were made to secular teachers.
Justice Black had no difficulty finding that the use of tax-supported property for religious instruction and the close cooperation between church and state officials constituted a violation of the Establishment Clause. "This is beyond all questions a utilization of the tax-established and tax-supported public school system to aid religous groups to spread their faith." After citing the six principles articulated in Everson the previous year, the Court concluded that the "wall of separation" between Church and State was breached by the program. He wanted to stress, however, that this decision evinced no government hostility toward religion. Both government and religion can achieve their "lofty aims" if each is "left free from the other within its respective sphere."
Justice Frankfurter's Concurrence
Another Roosevelt appointee, Justice Frankfurter, realized that decision by cliche was a dangerous practice, and so stated that "We cannot illuminatingly apply the 'wall-of-separation' metaphor until we have considered the relevant history of religious education in America, the place of the 'released time' movement in that history, and its precise manifestation in the case before us." Though his history of the relationship of religion to the public schools during the 18th-19th centuries is somewhat sketchy, he goes into helpful detail regarding the origin and development of release-time education.
Developed by a Gary, IN superintendent of schools in the early 20th century, release-time was part of an educational experiment that allowed various forms of learning in different venues. In 1914-15, when it was developed in Gary, 619 students attended these classes; by 1947, the year before this decision, almost 2,000,000 American school children in 2,200 communities participated in release-time. Thus, by 1948 it had become a major cultural experiment. In Justice Frankfurter's words, "It is only when challenge is made to the share that the public schools have in the execution of a particular 'released time' program that close judicial scrutiny is demanded of the exact relation between the religious instruction and the public educational system in the specific situation before the Court."
The nub of Justice Frankfurter's dissent was that religious education so conducted on school time and property is patently woven into the working scheme of the school and thus "presents powerful elements of inherent pressure by the school system in the interest of religious sects." His understanding of separation meant that there had to be an abstention from "fusing" the functions of Government and religious sects and not merely to treat them all equally. Obvious pressure for students to attend, combined with the fact that only representatives of a few religious traditions led these instructional times suggests that those belonging to more minority traditions will have a "feeling of separatism" unwittingly inculcated in them when the school should be the "traning ground for habits of community."
Other Concurrence and Dissent
Justice Jackson showed the most sensitivity to the practical effects of the decision. He was aware that the Court was being unclear regarding the nature of released time religious education. Was the Court condemning the practice or merely criticizing the particular arrangement in Illinois? Because he saw the opinion as an invitation to hundreds of lawsuits, he tried to lay out principles limiting who would have standing to bring such a suit. Because of the confusion surrounding the Court's decision, it revisited the issue four years later in Zorach.
Finally, Justice Stanley Reed dissented. His approach was to direct attention to the numerous instances of close association between religion and state in American society. He contended that "aid" to religions, which he understood to be proscribed by the First Amendment, needed to be interpreted to include much more than just "incidental advantages" that religouis bodies obtain as a by-product of living in our organized society. Practices of allowing prayer in the Congress and hiring chaplains at Military Academies out of public funds shows that the lesser practice of permitting released-time education was not at all an attempt by government to establish a religion.
Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long |