ABSTRACT
The Court of Appeals thought that revocation of a teaching certificate was an excessive "sanction" discouraging even privileged exercise of First Amendment rights more than is necessary to achieve the law's purpose of maintaining religious freedom and neutrality in the public schools. The main battleground has been the public schools, as the cases under the constitutional proscriptions of "sectarian influence" and later under the First Amendment show. The law could be described either as denying a teacher's right to practice her religion or as denying a person demonstratively committed to a religious vocation the opportunity to teach in the public schools. The religious influence on children while in the public school that laws like ORS 342.650, in their concern with the employment of nuns wearing their special garb as public school teachers, legitimately seek to prevent is not the mere knowledge that a teacher is an adherent of a particular religion.
