North Dakota v. 75 Nuns

Should nuns be allowed to teach in public schools? All North Dakota had been seething over the question, though newspapers and radio stations had barely mentioned it, for fear of aggravating religious tensions.

For 30 years in the heavily Catholic western prairies of the state, wherever school boards couldn't find or couldn't afford other teachers, nuns have been filling the gaps. Their salary (paid by the taxpayers): about $1,000 a year. North Dakota Protestants, who outnumber Catholics about four to one, took the issue to the state's supreme court in 1936, contending that the hiring of nuns violated the separation of church and state. The court decided that the wearing of religious garb did not constitute religious teaching.

Next, the Protestants went to the state legislature, but got nowhere. Then they got the so called "anti-garb" issue on the ballot. They passed out leaflets headed: "Where Will This Stop?" Replied one Catholic leader: "The nuns are there practically as a matter of charity. They are needed in our own hospitals and parochial schools." Besides, he added, there were only 75 nuns teaching public school, and less than 5% of their pupils were non-Catholic.

Last week, however, by a 10,000-vote majority, the citizens of North Dakota decided that the nuns must go.

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