## Facts

- Shelton College, a religiously oriented institution in New Jersey, awarded bachelor’s degrees but lacked a state license required for degree-granting institutions.
- New Jersey law authorized the State Board of Education to prescribe rules, set minimum standards, and license institutions empowered to confer academic degrees, with enforcement by the Attorney General and potential license revocation by the Board.
- Shelton refused to submit to the licensing regime, asserting that its religious character exempted it from state control over its degree-granting activities.
- The Attorney General sought to restrain Shelton from operating as an unlicensed degree-granting institution.
- Shelton challenged the statute as (i) an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power due to insufficient standards and (ii) an infringement of federal and state constitutional protections for religious liberty and related rights.

## Issues

1. Whether the statutory authorization for the State Board of Education to set standards and license degree-granting institutions was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power due to inadequate legislative standards.
2. Whether applying the degree-licensing scheme to a religious college violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments, or parallel state constitutional protections, by burdening religious exercise or otherwise regulating religious activity.
3. Whether the statutory scheme was impermissibly vague or denied due process by failing to provide adequate notice and safeguards against arbitrary enforcement.

## Decision

- The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the statute and sustained the State’s authority to require a license for the granting of academic degrees.
- The court held the delegation valid because the statute, read in light of its subject matter and purpose, provided sufficient guidance for administrative action.
- The court rejected Shelton’s religious-liberty claims, concluding the State was regulating the secular public function of degree conferral rather than religious doctrine or worship.
- The court rejected vagueness and due-process objections, finding that general standards were permissible in a specialized educational context and that administrative processes and judicial review constrained discretion.
- The enforcement effort to restrain unlicensed degree-granting was permitted.

## Legal Principles

- A legislature may delegate broad regulatory authority to an administrative agency when the statute, construed in context, sets a discernible policy and reasonably clear guides tied to the statute’s subject matter and purpose.
- A state has a legitimate interest in protecting the public and the integrity of academic degrees and may require minimum educational standards and licensing for institutions that confer secular academic credentials.
- Religious motivation does not exempt an institution from neutral regulation aimed at secular credentialing; regulation limited to degree-granting standards does not, without more, infringe protected religious functions.
- In specialized regulatory settings, statutes may use general terms; professional norms, agency rulemaking, and the availability of judicial review can provide workable notice and guard against arbitrary enforcement.

## Conclusion

The court upheld New Jersey’s degree-licensing framework as a valid delegation and a permissible, neutral regulation of secular academic credentials, allowing the State to restrain a religious college from awarding bachelor’s degrees without meeting state licensing and minimum academic standards.


Shelton Coll. v. State Bd. of Educ., 48 N.J. 501, 226 A.2d 612 (N.J. 1967)