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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 3/8/23: Next Target? [1]
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Date: 2023-03-08
76 years ago today religious instruction in public schools was ruled unconstitutional. McCollum v. Board of Education was a landmark case.
The case tested the principle of "released time", where public schools set aside class time for religious instruction. The Court struck down a Champaign, Illinois program as unconstitutional because of the public school system's involvement in the administration, organization and support of religious instruction classes. The Court noted that some 2,000 communities nationwide offered similar released time programs affecting 1.5 million students.[1]
The case was brought by Vashti McCollum, the mother of a student enrolled in the Champaign public school district.
In 1940, interested members of the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faiths formed an association named the Champaign Council on Religious Education. This association obtained permission from the Champaign Board of Education to offer voluntary religious education classes for public school students from grades four to nine. These weekly 30- and 45-minute classes were led by clergy and lay members of the association in public school classrooms during school hours.
McCollum, an atheist, objected to the existing religious classes, stating that her son James was ostracized for not attending them. After complaints to school officials to stop offering these classes went unheeded, McCollum sued the school board in July 1945, stating that the religious instruction in the public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment—the principle of separation of church and state in the United States. McCollum also complained that the school district's religious education classes violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The principal elements of the McCollum complaint were that:
In actual practice, certain Protestant groups exercised an advantage over other Protestant denominations.
The school district's calling the classes "voluntary" was in name only because school officials often coerced or forced students' participation.
The power exercised by the Champaign Council on Religious Education in its selection of instructors and the school superintendent's oversight of these instructors served to determine which religious faiths participated in the instructional program and constituted prior censorship of religion.
In her suit, McCollum asked that the Board of Education be ordered to "adopt and enforce rules and regulations prohibiting all instruction in and teaching of all religious education in all public schools in Champaign District Number 71, and in all public school houses and buildings in said district when occupied by public schools".
The Circuit Court of Champaign County ruled in favor of the school district in January 1946, and upon appeal, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's ruling.
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