The New Jersey Supreme Court held that the provision violated the state constitution's purpose restriction on the legislative power to authorize spending for private and parochial schools.
[8] In a majority opinion by Justice Hugo Black, the Supreme Court ruled that the state bill was constitutionally permissible because the law had a "public purpose" to provide safe transportation to parochial school students.
No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.
In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "'a wall of separation between Church and State.
The four dissenters agreed with Justice Black's definition of the Establishment Clause but protested that the principles that he laid down would logically lead to the invalidation of the challenged law:[12] The great condition of religious liberty is that it be maintained free from sustenance, as also from other interferences, by the state.
The Establishment Clause would not allow any public spending "to support any religious activities, or institutions whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion".
[19] Having invoked Jefferson's metaphor of the wall of separation in the Everson decision, lawmakers and courts have struggled how to balance governments' dual duty to satisfy the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.
The majority and dissenting Justices in Everson split over the question, with Rutledge in the minority by insisting that the Constitution forbids "every form of public aid or support for religion.
The four Justices who dissented in Everson—Justices Harold H. Burton, Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, Wiley Rutledge— were reluctant to endorse the McCollum ruling.
The Court's historical argument was reaffirmed in subsequent cases including Abington School District v. Schempp, Engel v. Vitale and McGowan v.