Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952), was a release time case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a school district allowing students to leave a public school for part of the day to receive off-site religious instruction did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Accordingly, students in New York City were allowed to leave only on written request of their guardians, but the schools did not fund or otherwise assist in the development of these programs.

[1] Several parents sued the district for providing official sanction for religious instruction.

The US Supreme Court upheld the arrangement by finding that it did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment or the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the instruction was not held within the school building and received no public funds.

Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson considered the law unconstitutional, and all three cited McCollum v. Board of Education (1948)[3] and believed that the Court did not adequately distinguish between the circumstances in McCollum and those in Zorach.