the religious liberty clauses in both the
federal and state constitutions have been
decided in recent years by the Court of
Appeals of Maryland and by the
Supreme Court of the United States. A
brief catalogue of the more important
holdings is presented here.
In McGowan v. Maryland,132 the
State's Sunday closing laws,133 which
generally prohibit the sale on Sunday
of all merchandise other than food,
medicine, gasoline and other necessaries,
were attacked as violations of the pro-
hibition against establishment of reli-
gion, as infringements upon religious
liberty, and as denials of equal protec-
tion of the laws. The Supreme Court
affirmed the Maryland Court of Appeals
in overruling all three of the above-
noted contentions. The Sunday laws
were held to be, not religious, but social
welfare legislation, designed to set aside
a day for rest, relaxation, and
family togetherness — although the
original purpose of the statutes was
admittedly in preference of one religion,
said the Court, such is no longer the
case. Moreover, the Court would not
concern itself with questioning the
wisdom of the legislature in enacting
seemingly arbitrary laws, so long as their
primary purpose was social welfare. (On
the other hand, if the object was to use
the State's coercive power to aid religion,
the Establishment Clause would be vio-
lated.)
Torcaso v. Watkins involved a notary
public, duly appointed by the governor,
who was denied his commission because
he refused to declare a "belief in the
existence of God," as required by Article
37 of the Maryland Declaration of
132 366 U.S. 420 (1961); see also stokes
& pfeffer, supra note 123 at 137-41.
133 md. code ann. art. 27, §521 (1967).
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Rights, supra. The Court of Appeals
upheld the requirement :
". . .[W]e find it difficult to
believe that the Supreme Court will
hold that a declaration of belief
in the existence of God, required by
Article 37 ... is discriminatory and
invalid .... As Mr. Justice
Douglas, speaking for a majority
of the Court in Zorach v. Clauson,
343 U.S. 306, 313, said: 'We are
a religious people whose institutions
presuppose a Supreme Being."134
However great the disbelief of the Court
of Appeals, the Supreme Court did find
the test to be an unconstitutional viola-
tion of the First and Fourteenth Amend-
ments, and reversed.135 Said the High
Court:
"Nothing decided or written in
Zorach lends support to the idea
that the Court there intended to
open up the way for government,
state or federal, to restore the
historically and constitutionally dis-
credited policy of probing religious
beliefs by test oaths or limiting
public offices to persons who have,
or perhaps more properly profess
to have, a belief in some particular
kind of religious concept".136
Torcaso's denial of the constitutional-
ity of the requirement that an office-
seeker declare his belief in a deity would
likewise seem to invalidate the use of
the language in Article 39, "attestation
of the Divine Being."
The issue before the courts in Murray
v. Curlett was whether daily bible read-
ing pursuant to a rule of Baltimore
134 223 Md. 49, 58 (1959).
135 367 U.S. 488 (1961).
136 367 U.S. 488 at 494. See also P. kur-
land, religion and the law, 107-08 (1961).
33
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