The 6 to 3 ruling in the later case held that a New York program allowing religious education during the school day was permissible, because it did not use public school facilities or public funds. The high court revisited the issue of religious instruction in Zorach v. The Supreme Court's ruling remanded the case to the Illinois high court for relief consistent with the federal ruling. The lone dissenting justice, Stanley Forman Reed, objected to the breadth of the majority's interpretation of the Establishment Clause and stated that an incidental support of religion should have been permissible with a more narrow reading of the First Amendment.
For the First Amendment rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere. manifest a governmental hostility to religion or religious teachings. To hold that a state cannot, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, utilize its public school system to aid any or all religious faiths or sects in the dissemination of their doctrines and ideals does not. in part from their legal duty upon the condition that they attend the religious classes. Pupils compelled by law to go to school for secular education are released. The operation of the state's compulsory education system thus assists and is integrated with the program of religious instruction carried on by separate religious sects. show the use of tax-supported property for religious instruction and the close cooperation between the school authorities and the religious council in promoting religious education. In the majority opinion, written by Justice Hugo Black, the Court held that On March 8, 1948, the Court ruled 8-1 in favor of McCollum, ruling that the classes were unconstitutional. A number of religious groups including the American Unitarian Association, the Synagogue Council of America, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and the Baptist Joint Committee of Religious Liberty filed briefs in support of McCollum's position. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case, taking oral arguments in December 1947. 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. 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 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.The school district's calling the classes "voluntary" was in name only because school officials often coerced or forced students' participation.In actual practice, certain Protestant groups exercised an advantage over other Protestant denominations.The principal elements of the McCollum complaint were that: McCollum also complained that the school district's religious education classes violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 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, an atheist, objected to the-existing religious classes, stating that her son James was ostracized for not attending them. These weekly 30- and 45-minute classes were led by clergy and lay members of the association in public school classrooms during school hours. 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. In 1940, interested members of the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faiths formed an association named the Champaign Council on Religious Education. The case was brought by Vashti McCollum, the mother of a student enrolled in the Champaign public school district.