James G. Blaine never saw a recycled tire, much less an automobile, but it was his failed constitutional amendment nearly a century and a half ago that led to the recent United States Supreme Court ruling that will allow a Lutheran Church preschool and day care center in Columbia, Mo., to have a playground surface of recycled tires.
In time, the high court ruling may have more implications than a playground in the Show-Me State – or it may not.
But here’s how we got there:
Blaine, then a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine, was trying to support then-President Ulysses S. Grant, who had called for free public schools but no government support for “sectarian schools” run by religious organizations or schools with “sectarian, pagan or atheistical dogmas.”
His 1875 Constitutional amendment read in part: “[N]o money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”