Falloux Law, (1850) act granting legal status to independent secondary schools in France. It was sponsored by Count Frédéric-Alfred-Pierre de Falloux (1811–86), minister of education in the Second Republic, and one of its main architects was a Roman Catholic bishop, Félix-Antoine-Philibert Dupanloup (1802–78). Under the guise of freedom of education, it restored much of the church’s traditional influence.