But that coercion, if it be present, [229] has not been shown; so the vices of the present regimes are different.

There were no District Court findings on this issue, since the case under the amended statute was decided exclusively on Establishment Clause grounds. directed against religion."

939 (1951); Howe, Religion and Race in Public Education, 8 Buffalo L. Rev.

I have said that these provisions authorizing religious exercises are properly to be regarded as measures making possible the free exercise of religion.

[79] One Protestant group recently commented, for example: "When one thinks of prayer as sincere outreach of a [285] human soul to the Creator, `required prayer' becomes an absurdity.

Supreme Court of United States. —The saying of invocational prayers in legislative chambers, state or federal, and the appointment of legislative chaplains, might well represent no involvements of the kind prohibited by the Establishment Clause. See generally Johnson and Yost, Separation of Church and State in the United States (1948), 33-36; Thayer, The Role of the School in American Society (1960), 374-375; Beth, The American Theory of Church and State (1958), 106-107. Its purpose is to secure religious liberty in the individual by prohibiting any invasions thereof by civil authority. Over a half century ago a New York court sustained a school board's exclusion from the public schools of teachers wearing religious garb on similar grounds: "Then all through the school hours these teachers . McCollum v. Board of Education, supra, at 218 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.). 322 U.S., at 86-87. The trial court in No. . Pending appeal to this Court by the school district, the statute was so amended, and we vacated the judgment and remanded for further proceedings.

But three further contentions have been pressed in the argument of these cases. On the other hand, the Court has upheld against such a challenge laws establishing Sunday as a compulsory day of rest, McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, and a law authorizing reimbursement from public funds for the transportation of parochial school pupils. (1) The court has jurisdiction of the parties and the subject matter of this litigation under Sections 1343, 2281, Title 28 United States Code.

Attendance at the public schools has never been compulsory; parents remain morally and constitutionally free to choose the academic environment in which they wish their children to be educated. This is more than mere `accommodation' of religion permitted in the Zorach case. And compare Miller v. Cooper, 56 N. M. 355, 244 P. 2d 520 (1952), in which a state court permitted the holding of public school commencement exercises in a church building only because no public buildings in the community were adequate to accommodate the ceremony. A single obvious example should suffice to make the point.

Inasmuch as the "Holy Bible" is a Christian document, the practice aids and prefers the Christian religion.[21]. 164 (Sup. [307] The practices here involved do not fall within any sensible or acceptable concept of compelled or permitted accommodation and involve the state so significantly and directly in the realm of the sectarian as to give rise to those very divisive influences and inhibitions of freedom which both religion clauses of the First Amendment preclude. "The children, the classmates of Roger and Donna are very liable to label and lump all particular religious difference or religious objections as atheism, particularly, today the word `atheism' is so often tied to atheistic communism, and atheism has very bad connotations in the minds of children and many adults today.". 1, 109 S. W. 115 (1908); People ex rel.

268 U. S., at 535. App. . These exercises are prescribed as part of the curricular activities of students who are required by law to attend school. is to decree a uniform, rigid and, if we are consistent, an unchanging standard for countless school boards representing and serving highly localized groups which not only differ from each other but which themselves from time to time change attitudes. ." This shows the earnest desire of our Revolutionary fathers that religion should be left to the free and voluntary action of the people themselves. 156-157 (1958); 2 Stokes, Church and State in the United States (1950), 501-506 (describing the "common denominator" or "three faiths" plan and certain programs of instruction designed to implement the "common core" approach). In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, a Catholic parochial school and a private but nonsectarian military academy challenged a state law requiring all children between certain ages to attend the public schools. [89] [297] The like provision by state and federal governments for chaplains in penal institutions may afford another example.

353, 358 (1960). The fullest realization of true religious liberty requires that government neither engage in nor compel religious practices, that it effect no favoritism among sects or between religion and nonreligion, and that it work deterrence of no religious belief. But if Hamilton retains any vitality with respect to higher education, we recognized its inapplicability to cognate questions in the public primary and secondary schools when we held in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, supra, that a State had no power to expel from public schools students who refused on religious grounds to comply with a daily flag [252] salute requirement. By such a standard, I am persuaded, as is the Court, that the devotional exercises carried on in the Baltimore and Abington schools offend the First Amendment because they sufficiently threaten in our day those substantive evils the fear of which called forth the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. 106, 286 N. Y. Supp.

The appellees Edward Lewis Schempp, his wife Sidney, and their children, Roger and Donna, are of the Unitarian faith and are members of the Unitarian church in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they, as well as another son, Ellory, regularly attend religious services. If either is the advancement or inhibition of religion then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the Constitution. But the religious exercises challenged in these cases have a long history. It is therefore remarkable that the courts of a half dozen States found compulsory religious exercises in the public schools in violation of their respective state constitutions. The Problem of Church and State in the United States, [1959] Pub.

He testified that his home room teacher stated to him that he should stand during the recitation of the Lord's Prayer, and that he then asked to be excused from "morning devotions". The reading of the ten verses preceded the recital of the Lord's Prayer and was separated from it on every occasion by an interval of time, however slight.

The suit is brought under 28 U.S.C. Also apposite are decisions of several courts which have enjoined the use of parochial schools as part of the public school system, Harfst v. Hoegen, 349 Mo. The ambiguity of history is understandable if we recall the nature of the problems uppermost in the thinking of the statesmen who fashioned the religious guarantees; they were concerned with far more flagrant intrusions of government into the realm of religion than any that our century has witnessed. Mann's continued use of the Bible for what he regarded as nonsectarian exercises represented his response to these cross-pressures. This evidence was uncontradicted. The answer is that the excusal procedure itself necessarily operates in such a way as to infringe the rights of free exercise of those children who wish to be excused. Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U. S. 291, for example, involved challenges to a federal grant to a hospital administered by a Roman Catholic order. This mandatory requirement of school attendance puts the children in the path of the compulsion.

142, must be affirmed, and that in Murray, No. [39] That argument relies in part upon the express terms of the [257] abortive Blaine Amendment—proposed several years after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment—which would have added to the First Amendment a provision that "[n]o State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion . See Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America (1902), 491. Padover, supra, at 1076. Therefore, the argument runs, the State may avoid an establishment only by singling out and excluding such persons on the ground that religious beliefs or practices have made them potential beneficiaries. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center.Gale. The absorption of the Establishment Clause has, however, come later and by a route less easily charted. 1891), 213-214. 25, 51 (1962). Certain preliminary questions of law must be disposed of before we can come to the basic issues. This line has settled the proposition that in order to give effect to the First Amendment's purpose of requiring on the part of all organs of government a strict neutrality toward theological questions, courts should not undertake to decide such questions. Such a conclusion can be reached, I would suggest, only by using the words of the First Amendment to defeat its very purpose. Murdock v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1943, 319 U.S. 105, 63 S. Ct. 870, 87 L. Ed.

110, 112-115 (1951).

363, 417 (1962). And such examples could readily be multiplied. An exception to these practices was recounted by Ellory Schempp who said that after the Senior High School had moved to a new building equipped with a public address system, the Bible was read over the loud speaker in each classroom following which a voice on the loud speaker directed the children to rise and repeat the Lord's Prayer. Moreover, the school exercises are not designed to provide the pupils with general opportunities for worship denied them by the legal obligation to attend school.