One conceivable difficulty is the entanglement problem. When a student transfers in to public school from a religious school, there may be several different sorts of courses that the student will have taken which may combine, in various degrees, "religious" and "secular" components. I'm not sure I agree with Marty that it is always the case that the transferred credits are awarded solely for purely secular courses. Segregating out the secular and religious components can be difficult. And getting the school district involved in determining which are purely secular, and which are mixed, and which are purely religious, might risk excessive entanglement.
Having said that, I agree that awarding credits for, e.g., CCD class or equivalent education is problematic. Marc From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Marty Lederman Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 9:58 AM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Providing public school credits for release-time religious classes www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/111448.P.pdf<http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/111448.P.pdf> A South Carolina school district set up a Zorach-like release time program for religious instruction at an unaccedited religious school. Then it decided to give the participating students academic credit for their purely religious studies in the release-time program. The Fourth Circuit upholds this program, on the theory that it's no different from recognizing credits from a private, accredited religious school when a student transfers to the public school. But in that latter case (or in the related context of giving "credit" for home-schooling), the credits presumably are awarded based upon the showing or the presumption that they reflect the student's completion of the necessary secular curriculum. Here, the education in question is specifically religious in nature (that's the point, and there's no indication in the opinion of any secular content). That is to say, the credit is being offered for the religious education simplicitur. Is this holding defensible? On Mirror of Justice, Rick Garnett calls it "welcome," but it's not obvious to me why that might be so.
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
