Illinois Ex Rel. McCollum v. Board of Ed. of School Dist. No. 71, Champaign Cty.

Justice Frankfurter agreed that the Champaign program was unconstitutional, but wrote separately to place the decision in the longer history of American public education. In his view, the secular public school developed as a democratic institution capable of educating a religiously diverse population without becoming a battleground for sectarian competition.

He emphasized that the Establishment Clause requires more than a ban on a formally established church. In education especially, government must avoid fusing its functions with those of religious bodies, because public schools are a powerful instrument for creating civic unity and because religious pressures can be especially difficult for children to resist.

The Champaign program was unconstitutional because religious instruction was woven into the school’s regular operation. Teachers distributed enrollment cards, classes met in ordinary classrooms during school hours, the superintendent exercised control over participation, and attendance was reported to school officials. These features gave the program the momentum and influence of the public-school system itself.

Frankfurter also stressed the pressure imposed on nonparticipating children. Even where enrollment was nominally voluntary, children who remained behind could be marked as outsiders, and smaller or unrepresented faiths could be disadvantaged. Equal access for several religions did not cure the constitutional problem, because separation requires government to abstain from joining its educational machinery to sectarian instruction.

He did not hold that every arrangement called “released time” was necessarily invalid. Programs differed in constitutionally important ways, particularly in their use of school property, public-school administration, and compulsory school time. But this program plainly crossed the line because Illinois effectively sponsored and furthered religious teaching through its schools.

Justice Jackson concurred in the result and joined Justice Frankfurter’s opinion, but expressed serious doubts about jurisdiction and the proper scope of judicial intervention. He questioned whether McCollum had shown either the personal coercion or substantial taxpayer injury that ordinarily permits a federal court to intervene in local school matters.

McCollum’s child was not legally required to take the religious classes, and the program’s added cost to taxpayers was, in Jackson’s view, negligible and unmeasurable. Still, assuming jurisdiction existed, he agreed that the formal religious classes at issue exceeded constitutional limits.

Jackson warned against reading the Court’s decision as authorizing courts to purge public education of every religious reference or influence. Public schools may properly teach about religion’s role in history, literature, art, music, and culture, even though deciding where education becomes proselytizing can be difficult.

He believed the requested mandamus was overly broad because it sought to prohibit all religious teaching in public schools without distinguishing impermissible sectarian instruction from permissible academic study of religion. Federal courts should not become national super school boards, he cautioned, and should leave local authorities room to address varied educational conditions unless a clear constitutional violation is shown.

Justice Reed would have affirmed. He agreed that the Establishment Clause applies to the States, but rejected the conclusion that Champaign’s voluntary program amounted to an establishment of religion. In his view, the teachers, curriculum, and religious instruction were supplied and controlled by private religious groups, not by the school board.

Reed understood forbidden governmental “aid” to mean direct and purposeful support of a church or of ecclesiastical activity. He regarded the school’s incidental assistance—allowing use of rooms, excusing students with parental consent, and maintaining routine enrollment and attendance records—as insufficient to establish religion, especially because the religious groups paid their own teachers and materials.

He argued that the majority failed to identify precisely which feature of the arrangement was unconstitutional: use of school buildings, release during school hours, distribution of request cards, attendance records, or some combination. Reed believed that this lack of a clear rule endangered many released-time programs and other longstanding practices involving government and religion.

Historical practice, in Reed’s view, supported Illinois. He pointed to government chaplains, religious observances at military academies, public assistance available to children attending religious schools, and longstanding released-time arrangements in many states. These practices showed, he argued, that the Constitution does not prohibit every cooperative or accommodating relationship between government and religion.

Reed also distinguished coercive religious exercises from this elective program. Parents had to request enrollment, instruction did not include worship services, prayer, or hymns, and the arrangement did not compel any child to profess a belief. The Establishment Clause, he concluded, does not require an absolute ban on every friendly gesture or incidental cooperation between church and state.