Counterattack

There are no lost causes, says T. S. Eliot, because there are no gained causes. The cause of Christian schools in this land is not yet lost, and they have gained considerable victories at law recently; but their enemies persist and remain powerful.

First for some victories. By federal courts in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, the National Labor Relations Board has been told not to meddle with Catholic schools. As I recounted earlier (NR, April 15), the teachers’ union had persuaded the NLRB to order Catholic schools to submit to the NLRB’s authority and allow elections for collective bargaining among their teachers. Now, chiefly through the learned pleading of Mr. William Ball—the Harrisburg man of law who has won case after case in questions of church and state—church-conducted schools are exempted from NLRB interference, under the first clause of the First Amendment and other provisions of the Constitution. The teachers’ unions and the NLRB may persist in carrying these cases all the way to Washington, but they have been powerfully rebuked thus far.

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Russell Kirk

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There are no lost causes, says T. S. Eliot, because there are no gained causes. The cause of Christian schools in this land is not yet lost, and they have gained considerable victories at law recently; but their enemies persist and remain powerful.

First for some victories. By federal courts in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, the National Labor Relations Board has been told not to meddle with Catholic schools. As I recounted earlier (NR, April 15), the teachers’ union had persuaded the NLRB to order Catholic schools to submit to the NLRB’s authority and allow elections for collective bargaining among their teachers. Now, chiefly through the learned pleading of Mr. William Ball—the Harrisburg man of law who has won case after case in questions of church and state—church-conducted schools are exempted from NLRB interference, under the first clause of the First Amendment and other provisions of the Constitution. The teachers’ unions and the NLRB may persist in carrying these cases all the way to Washington, but they have been powerfully rebuked thus far.