Supreme Court Appeal
On June 2, 1947, the U. S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and arguments started December 8, 1947. Attorney Walter F. Dodd represented the plaintiff to the supreme court and John L. Franklin again served as counsel for the State of Illinois.
In an 8-1 decision announced on March 8, 1948 333 U.S. 203, the high court reversed the ruling of the lower courts, holding that the school district's religious instruction program was unconstitutional. A critical issue in the case was whether the constitutional ban on establishing religion meant that all sects must be treated equally, as lawyers for Champaign argued was the case in their schools, or whether it required strict neutrality between belief and unbelief, which was Mrs. McCollum's successful contention. "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 in its respective sphere," Justice Black wrote. The case was also important because it extended First Amendment protection to individual states by using the due process clause of the 14th Amendment as a justification. All other cases that have since tested and continue to test Thomas Jefferson's wall of "separation of church and state," including school prayer, aid to parochial schools and sectarian religious displays on public property descend from this case.
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