McCollum Prelacies Court

Mrs. Vashti of complete separation between church and state, told a small receptive audience at Against last Sunday that the recent Supreme Court decision on prayer in New York schools is "good law" because it correctly interprets what she called an unmistakable constitutional injunction against the public "establishment of religion."

Mrs. McCollum, who is president of the American Humanist Association, spoke at a meeting sponsored by the Harvard branch of that organization she is the well-known plaintiff in a 1943 Supreme Court case (McCollum vs. Board of Education) in which the Court ruled that classes in religion could not be taught on public school grounds. The decision is important to the first application of a 1947 Court opinion that the First Amendment's guarantee that "Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" was made applicable to state legislation by the Fourteenth Amendment.