The Dixon School Case (Zellers v. Huff) was a lawsuit started in 1948 in New Mexico contesting the use of nuns, religious brothers and priests as teachers in publicly supported schools under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case involved thirty schools in eleven New Mexico counties, twenty-eight plaintiffs, two hundred defendants, and public expenditures to the schools of over $600,000 annually. Following on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Everson v. Board of Education, which applied First Amendment freedoms to state as well as federal law, the Dixon School Case was the first state case to implement separation of church and state in public schools, and was watched with interest nationally.