Cite as: 505 U. S. 577 (1992)
Souter, J., concurring
§ 1307.31 (1991), the government conveys no endorsement of peyote rituals, the Church, or religion as such; it simply respects the centrality of peyote to the lives of certain Americans. See Note, The Free Exercise Boundaries of Permissible Accommodation Under the Establishment Clause, 99 Yale L. J. 1127, 1135-1136 (1990).
B
Whatever else may define the scope of accommodation permissible under the Establishment Clause, one requirement is clear: accommodation must lift a discernible burden on the free exercise of religion. See County of Allegheny, supra, at 601, n. 51; id., at 631-632 (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); Corporation of Presiding Bishop, supra, at 348 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment); see also Texas Monthly, supra, at 18, 18-19, n. 8 (plurality opinion); Wallace v. Jaffree, supra, at 57-58, n. 45. But see County of Allegheny, supra, at 663, n. 2 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). Concern for the position of religious individuals in the modern regulatory State cannot justify official solicitude for a religious practice unburdened by general rules; such gratuitous largesse would effectively favor religion over dis-belief. By these lights one easily sees that, in sponsoring the graduation prayers at issue here, the State has crossed the line from permissible accommodation to unconstitutional establishment.
Religious students cannot complain that omitting prayers from their graduation ceremony would, in any realistic sense, "burden" their spiritual callings. To be sure, many of them invest this rite of passage with spiritual significance, but they may express their religious feelings about it before and after the ceremony. They may even organize a privately sponsored baccalaureate if they desire the company of like-minded students. Because they accordingly have no need for the machinery of the State to affirm their beliefs, the
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