Children in American public schools traditionally learned the three R’s: reading, writing and arithmetic. Today, students in more than half of the U.S. states can study a fourth R: religion.Oklahoma is the most recent state to allow school boards to implement “release time”: off-site classes with religious or moral instruction that K-12 students can attend for part of school days with parental consent. Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 1425 into law, which authorized the program, on June 5, 2024.Oklahoma’s law requires school boards to adopt policies permitting students to attend release-time classes for up to three class periods per week. Sessions must be taught at independent entities not on school property. Instructors need not be certificated educators but must keep attendance records, and students are responsible for making up classwork they miss.In a move likely to generate controversy, the Satanic Temple – a nontheistic religious group that advocates for separation of church and state, along with such ideas as rationality, compassion and bodily autonomy – announced its intention to offer classes on its Facebook account.Release time may spark debate, but it is not new. Programs were proposed in New York City in 1905, although the first program did not open until 1914, in Gary, Indiana. The number of states with programs grew in the 1930s and ‘40s – and the issue soon made its way to the Supreme Court.Two cases, two outcomes The first of two Supreme Court cases on release time was decided in 1948. Controversy arose when a local board in Illinois allowed Jewish, Protestant and Roman Catholic leaders to enter public schools to offer religion classes to children whose parents agreed to let them miss regular class time to participate.In McCollum v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court struck the program down for two reasons.First, the justices held that the program impermissibly allowed tax-supported buildings to be used to teach religion, violating the First Amendment – which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Second, the court invalidated the program because it granted faith-based groups invaluable, impermissible aid by helping them to spread their faiths.Four years later, in Zorach v. Clauson, the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of a different type of release time program from New York City. This program allowed officials to release students from their public schools to attend off-site religion classes.This ...
