Supreme Court Opinion Detailed Record - Hugo Black Digital Library

Participant Info

Description: The Court upholds in Zorach v. Clauson a New York program permitting its children to leave public schools during the school day to attend religious centers for religious instruction or devotional exercises. Black’s dissent suggests that “the sole question is whether New York can use its compulsory education laws to help religious sects get attendants presumably too unenthusiastic to go unless moved to do so by the pressure of this state machinery.” Invoking his belief that the Constitution establishes a “wall of separation between church and state,” Black writes: “Any use of such coercive power by the state to help or hinder some religious sects or to prefer all religious sects over nonbelievers or vice versa is just what I think the First Amendment forbids.”