The December 1996 and January 1997 issues of The Utah Humanist carried an article written by Nancy Moore challenging current release time practices in Utah public schools. Nancy is a career High School Counselor who has retired due to terminal cancer.

At Nancy's request I sent copies of her article to the State Board of Education, the State Attorney General's Office, the Utah Education Association, and Ed Doerr, President of the American Humanist Association and long time Church State Separation activist. Recently I received a reply from Douglas F. Bates, Coordinator School Law and Legislation at the State School Board. Here is his response:

"Shortly before Christmas last year, you sent a letter to the Utah Attorney General's Office with copy to the Curriculum Division of the State Office of Education expressing concern about release time seminary.

"Released time religious instruction has been permitted in public schools in Utah and other states for many years. The U.S. Supreme Court addressed the practice in 1952 in Zorach vs. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 72 S.Ct. 679, 96 L.Ed. 954 (1952). Mr. Justice Douglas, writing for the Court in a case involving released time religious instruction in New York City, stated:

When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe Government may not finance religious groups nor undertake religious instruction nor blend secular and sectarian education nor use secular institutions to force one or some religion on any person. But we find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence.

"It is clear from the above that released time religious instruction may not be provided in school-owned facilities; the instruction must take place in privately owned facilities apart from the school. Because of the numbers of students that typically participate in LDS and non-LDS released time instruction in Utah, it is also clear that reasonable accommodations are essential to avoid unnecessary burdens upon both the school and the seminary program. As noted by the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in a case which challenged extension of a school intercom system to the seminary building and the provision of boxes in the school building where seminary personnel could obtain copies of school notices and other information:

The primary effect of these aspects of the program is simply to make the school's administration of the released-time system convenient and to avoid unnecessary conflicts with school classes and activities. The seminaries pay for the installation and maintenance of the intercom system, and the cost of the boxes is presumably negligible. These aspects of the program neither advance nor inhibit religion. Neither do these aspects of the program foster an excessive government entanglement with religion. Lanner vs. Wimmer, 662 F.2d 1349, 1359 (1981).

"I have enclosed a copy of the Lanner case for your information. Nancy Moore may be sincere in her beliefs about released time seminary, law, and the Constitution, but neither the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals nor the U.S. Supreme Court fully shares those views. The Supreme Court has not charted a clear course between the separationist and accommodationist extremes, and if anything appears at the present time to be leaning towards the latter--the Court, for example, invited a challenge to an earlier decision prohibiting public school teachers from teaching special needs children in parochial schools; the case was recently accepted by the Court, will be decided this year, and a majority of the justices are apparently prepared to overturn the previous decision. Their opinion could well have major impacts upon a number of current policies and practices in the schools."

--Wayne Wilson