The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter of complaint regarding the  recognition of Good Friday as a campus holiday by fifteen of the state’s sixteen technical colleges, apparently pursuant to collective bargaining agreements with instructional staff. The FFRF argues that closing on Good Friday (not just calling the off day “Good Friday’) is inconsistent with a 1996 decision of the Western District of Wisconsin invalidating a state law that mandated the closing of public facilities for the purpose of worship.

The prior decision seems distinguishable to me given the statute’s explicit reference to closing for a religious purpose. It’s hard, in light of that, not to see the statute as violating current Establishment Clause doctrines.

These cases tend to turn on some ascription (often fictional) of a religious or secular purpose to the state.  FFRF will have to show that the recognition of the Good Friday holiday has a religious purpose or amounts to an endorsement of Christianity. It may well lose because a court will conjure some secular justification for recognition of the holiday, e.g, that the day also known as Good Friday has become a traditional opening to the spring vacation.