And a year later a nearly unanimous Court overturned
on the above grounds a "released time" arrangement under which the
Champaign, Illinois Board of Education agreed that religious instruction
should be given in the local schools to pupils whose parents signed
"request cards." The classes were to be conducted during regular school
hours in the school building by outside teachers furnished by a
religious council representing the various faiths, subject to the
approval or supervision of the superintendent of schools. Attendance
records were kept and reported to the school authorities in the same way
as for other classes; and pupils not attending the religious-instruction
classes were required to continue their regular secular studies.[19]
Said Justice Black, speaking for the Court: "Here not only are the
State's tax-supported public school buildings used for the dissemination
of religious doctrines. The State also affords sectarian groups an
invaluable aid in that it helps to provide pupils for their religious
classes through use of the State's compulsory public school machinery.
This is not separation of Church and State."[20]

Justice Frankfurter presented a concurring opinion for himself and
Justices Jackson, Rutledge and Burton. "We are all agreed," it begins,
"that the First and Fourteenth Amendments have a secular reach far more
penetrating in the conduct of Government than merely to forbid an
'established church.'"[21] What ensues is a well documented account of
the elimination of sectarianism from the American school system which is
reinterpreted as a fight for the secularization of public supported
education.[22] Facing then the emergence of the "released time"
expedient,[23] Justice Frankfurter characterizes it as a "conscientious
attempt to accommodate the allowable functions of Government and the
special concerns of the Church within the framework of our
Constitution."[24] Elsewhere in his opinion he states: "Of course,
'released time' as a generalized conception, undefined by
differentiating particularities, is not an issue for Constitutional
adjudication. * * * The substantial differences among arrangements
lumped together as 'released time' emphasize the importance of detailed
analysis of the facts to which the Constitutional test of Separation is
to be applied. How does 'released time' operate in Champaign?"[25] And
again: "We do not consider, as indeed we could not, school programs not
before us which, th