Released Time

Released Time, the practice of permitting public school students to receive religious instruction during school hours. A Champaign, Illinois, program was declared invalid as an establishment of religion in Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education (1948). The board allowed sectarian teachers nominated by a council of churches and approved by the superintendent of schools to conduct religious instruction in public school classrooms. Attendance at the religion classes was required for participating students; other students received secular instruction in alternate classrooms. The Court held that the superintendent's approval of the teachers, the use of public school classrooms, and the assistance given by compulsory attendance laws breached the separation of church and state.

However, in Zorach v. Clauson (1952), the Court approved a New York City practice of releasing students from school to attend the religious center of their choice to receive instruction. Absences from the religious classes were reported but not acted upon. Nonparticipating students remained in school. There was no school approval of the teachers, public school classrooms were not used, and no public funds were expended in this program.

Zorach modified the strict separationist approach of McCollum to allow some accommodation of church and state. The line between the acceptable and the forbidden is drawn according to the degree of interaction required between religious and governmental institutions. These two holdings anticipate the “excessive entanglement” test enunciated in 1971 in Lemon v. Kurtzman (see Lemon Test). Zorach opened up the possibility that some government aid to religious educational institutions might be constitutionally permissible.

See also Education; First Amendment; Religion; School Prayer and Bible Reading.

Robert H. Birkby