Zorach v. Clauson

Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952), was a release time case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a school district allowing students to leave a public school for part of the day to receive off-site religious instruction did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Zorach v. Clauson
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 31 – February 1, 1952 Decided April 28, 1952
Full case name	Zorach, et al. v. Clauson, et al., constituting the Board of Education of the City of New York, et al.
Citations	343 U.S. 306 (more) 72 S. Ct. 679; 96 L. Ed. 954; 1952 U.S. LEXIS 2773
Case history
Prior	303 N.Y. 161, 100 N.E.2d 463 (1951); probable jurisdiction noted, 72 S. Ct. 232 (1951).
Holding
Released time programs are acceptable if the instruction takes place away from the school campus, for 1 hour per week, and with no public funding.
Court membership
Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson Associate Justices Hugo Black · Stanley F. Reed Felix Frankfurter · William O. Douglas Robert H. Jackson · Harold H. Burton Tom C. Clark · Sherman Minton
Case opinions
Majority	Douglas, joined by Vinson, Reed, Burton, Clark, Minton
Dissent	Black
Dissent	Frankfurter
Dissent	Jackson
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I

Case

New York State law permitted schools to allow some students to leave school during school hours for purposes of religious instruction or practice while requiring others to stay in school. Accordingly, students in New York City were allowed to leave only on written request of their guardians, but the schools did not fund or otherwise assist in the development of these programs.

The Greater New York Coordinating Committee on Released Time of Jews, Protestants and Roman Catholics shared their attendance with the New York City Department of Education to prevent students from being truant, however. Several parents sued the district for providing official sanction for religious instruction.

Supreme Court

Decision

The US Supreme Court upheld the arrangement by finding that it did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the instruction was not held within the school building and received no public funds.

Justice William O. Douglas, writing for the majority, reasoned that "this 'released time' program involves neither religious instruction in public school classrooms nor the expenditure of public funds.... The case is therefore unlike McCollum v. Board of Education."

On the developing controversy of separation doctrine the Zorach majority said that the First Amendment did not require an absolute separation of Church and State where "the state and religion would be aliens to each other—hostile, suspicious and even unfriendly".

Dissents

Three justices dissented from the decision. Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson considered the law unconstitutional, and all three cited McCollum v. Board of Education (1948) and believed that the Court did not adequately distinguish between the circumstances in McCollum and those in Zorach. Jackson's dissent was especially strong: "Today's judgment will be more interesting to students of psychology and of the judicial processes than to students of constitutional law."

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 343

Further reading

• Sorauf, Frank J. (1959). "Zorach v. Clauson: The Impact of a Supreme Court Decision". American Political Science Review. 53 (3): 777–791. doi:10.2307/1951943. JSTOR 1951943. S2CID 145174979.
• Ball, William B. (1962). "The School Prayer Case: Dilemma of Disestablishment - Part I". Catholic Lawyer. 8 (3): 186.

External links

• Text of Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952) is available from: Cornell CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress Oyez (oral argument audio)