Iowa's Republican Governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 870 into law on Friday, allowing parents to send their children to “a course in private religious instruction that is provided by a private organization” during the school day.
Reynolds' approval of the legislation follows its passage in a nearly unanimous vote of 96-2 in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a 47-0 vote in the Senate. Additional provisions of the law require the religious organization offering such courses to maintain attendance records and assume liability for any incidents involving the children during classes.
The measure stipulates that parents must notify the school that their children are attending and that the course does not “require the child to be absent from school for more than five hours per week.”
The law clarifies that parents are responsible for transporting their children to and from the religious instruction courses. It also prohibits the use of public funds by school districts for sending children to these courses and forbids the use of public school facilities for religious instruction.
Moreover, it grants parents a right of action against any school district that does not permit their children to attend religious instruction during school hours and updates the definition of “chronically absent” to exclude absences for participation in religious instruction.
“Parents have the right and responsibility to guide the upbringing and education of their children. The government should not stop families from raising their children in their family’s faith,” said Greg Chafuen, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit organization.
Chafuen noted that the law aligns with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the 1952 case Zorach v. Clauson, which described religious released time as being “in line with the best of our traditions” and confirmed that such programs do not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. States like Ohio and Oklahoma have similar laws permitting religious released time.
Ohio's law has come under scrutiny from the separation of church and state advocacy group Freedom From Religion Foundation. In a statement following the passage of Ohio’s law in 2023, FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor said, “If parents want their children to learn about the Bible, there are so many ways to do it without cutting into valuable school hours.”
She added that FFRF “received several complaints from families in different school districts alleging that non-attending students were given busy work, or no work at all, as a consequence of staying behind during released time classes.”
