Hysong v. Gallitzin: Habits, Garb, and the Public Classroom

The small borough of Gallitzin was the setting for a legal dispute that shaped how America thinks about religion in public schools. In eighteen ninety-four, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in Hysong v. Gallitzin School District that Catholic Sisters of Saint Joseph could wear their religious habits while teaching in the public schools here.

The ruling sparked an immediate legislative response. The Pennsylvania General Assembly passed the Garb Act of eighteen ninety-five, prohibiting public school teachers from wearing any religious clothing or insignia in the classroom. Pennsylvania is now the last state with such a ban on the books, and the question it raised has never fully settled: how do you balance a teacher's right to religious expression with the constitutional principle of secular public education? Courts at the state and federal level have wrestled with it ever since. It began with a group of sisters in habits in a small mountain town in Cambria County.