[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 41 (Thursday, April 2, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E583]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   McCOLLUM V. BOARD OF EDUCATION: A MILESTONE FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

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                          HON. JERROLD NADLER

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, April 1, 1998

  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to mark the 50th anniversary of 
the Supreme Court's decision in the case of McCollum versus Board of 
Education of School District No. 71, in which the Court clearly 
expressed the importance of maintaining the separation of church and 
state. As the Congress considers a proposed constitutional amendment 
which threatens that important principle, I urge every member of this 
House to read the Court's decision. It clearly illustrates how the 
separation of church and state, enshrined in the First Amendment, 
protects the fundamental rights of free conscience and religious 
liberty.
  The McCollum family had a son attending the fourth grade in a public 
school in Champaign, Illinois. The Champaign school district allowed a 
local private organization, the Champaign Council on Religious 
Education, to send religious teachers into the public school during 
regular school hours. Students were released from regular classes to 
attend private religious instruction in the public school building.
  In theory, any remaining students were required to leave their 
classrooms and pursue their regular studies elsewhere in the school 
building. In practice, James McCollum was the only student in his class 
who did not attend the religious instruction. He was sent to the 
principal's office or made to sit at the detention desk for problem 
students out in the hall--as though he were being punished.
  The family was also subject to ostracism. They became outcasts in 
Champaign, and the children, particularly James, were harassed. The 
family cat was killed, and once, on Halloween, the family answered the 
door to trick-or-treaters only to be pelted with garbage. The verbal 
abuse grew so great that when James got to junior high, be moved to 
Rochester, N.Y., to live with his grandmother and go to school there. 
According to James, now a retired attorney, his mother worked at the 
University of Illinois, but when it became known that she had brought 
this lawsuit, she was fired.
  Unfortunately, this sort of situation is far from a thing of the 
past. Many of my colleagues may remember the testimony of Lisa Herdahl 
whose family challenged prayers and religious Bible instruction in the 
public schools in Pontotoc County, Mississippi. The Herdahl children 
were harassed at school and singled out by teachers and other students. 
The family was subject to community protests and hostile newspaper 
coverage. After school officials ignored the Herdahl family's requests 
to put an end to the coercive practices, People for the American Way 
Foundation and the ACLU of Mississippi filed suit in federal court, 
citing the McCollum case among others. Two years ago, a federal judge 
ruled against the school district, and school officials decided not to 
appeal.
  We are often urged to blur, or even eliminate, the line that has long 
separated church from state. But experience shows us that when we allow 
this to happen, the rights of individual Americans are trampled upon by 
the majority. The purpose of the ``wall of separation'' is not to 
protect government from religious, as it is often alleged, but to 
protect religion, and particularly the individual religious beliefs of 
all Americans from government.
  When some in the community attempt to use the power of government, in 
these cases against children required by law to be present in school, 
to further their own sectarian goals, the hand of government will 
inevitably be coercive. If religious freedom is to have any meaning at 
all, if must be that no one should ever be allowed to use the power of 
government to coerce another citizen, especially a vulnerable and 
impressionable child, on matters of faith.
  Justice Hugo Black wrote in his opinion in McCollum, ``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.'' The hard and bitter experience of 
families, like the McCollum family fifty years ago, and the Herdahl 
family in this decade, is that the authors of the First Amendment were 
right to keep government away from religion, the Court was right in 
remaining true to the principle, and it would be a terrible mistake for 
Congress to ignore the lessons of history and wisdom of our Bill of 
Rights.
  Justice Felix Frankfurter, put it well in the McCollum case, when he 
wrote, ``The great American principle of eternal separation . . . is 
one of the vital reliances of our Constitutional system for assuring 
unities among our people stronger than our diversities.'' I hope the 
members of this Congress will defend our national unity, the rights of 
all Americans, and leave the First Amendment the way it is.

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