ABSTRACT
In Champaign, Illinois, students were released from their public school classes for a period of thirty or forty-five minutes each week so that they might take religious instruction. This instruction was given on the school premises by teachers approved but not employed by the public school. Mrs. McCollum, who chose not to have her child take such religious training, sued to enjoin the continuance of the system on the ground that it violated the first and fourteenth amendments by utilization of the compulsory education law to compel attendance at religious courses. Mr. Justice Frankfurter found the problem somewhat more complex in the opinion he wrote for himself and Justices Jackson, Rutledge, and Burton, the last two of whom also joined the majority opinion. Separation is a requirement to abstain from fusing functions of Government and of religious sects, not merely to treat them all equally.
