March 3, 1952 - Court prohibits communist teachers - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

U.S. Supreme Court prohibits communists from teaching in New York schools. At the height of the “red scare” in the United States, a number of laws were passed to prevent anyone with communist sympathies from working in the public service. In the state of New York, the Feinberg Law prohibited people who’d called for a government overthrow to teach. Designed to catch Communist Party members, the law enabled school boards to fire a number of teachers for their political beliefs. But when a group of teachers and parents challenged the law, “Adler vs. the Board of Education of the City of New York” went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. On March 3, 1952, the court upheld the law. Six of the nine judges stressed the importance of shielding students from subversive propaganda pushed by teachers “to whom they look for guidance, authority and leadership." The three dissenting judges stated that the law "turns the school system into a spying project." It would be more than a decade before another Supreme Court decision in 1967 rendered most of the Feinberg Law (and equivalent laws in other states) unconstitutional.

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