The Board of Regents for the State of New York authorized a short, voluntary prayer for recitation at the start of each school day as an attempt to defuse the politically potent issue by taking it out of the hands of local communities. Because pupils were required to attend school and were released in part from this legal duty if they attended the religious classes, the Court found that the Champaign system was “beyond question a utilization of the tax-established and tax-supported public school system to aid religious groups and to spread the faith.” (The Oyez Project, McCollum v. The Court held that the use of tax-supported property for religious instruction and the cooperation between the school authorities and the religious council violated the Establishment clause. Students who chose not to attend the classes were required to go to some other place in the building to pursue secular studies. Cooperating with the Champaign Board of Education, the Council offered voluntary classes in religious instruction to public school pupils which were conducted in the regular classrooms of the school building. In 1940, members of the Jewish, Roman Catholic and some Protestant faiths formed a voluntary association called the Champaign (Illinois) Council on Religious Education.
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