702
Opinion of the Court
Because the district's creation ran uniquely counter to state practice, following the lines of a religious community where the customary and neutral principles would not have dictated the same result, we have good reasons to treat this district as the reflection of a religious criterion for identifying the recipients of civil authority. Not even the special needs of the children in this community can explain the legislature's unusual Act, for the State could have responded to the concerns of the Satmar parents without implicating the Establishment Clause, as we explain in some detail further on. We therefore find the legislature's Act to be substantially equivalent to defining a political subdivision and hence the qualification for its franchise by a religious test, resulting in a purposeful and forbidden "fusion of governmental and religious functions." Larkin v. Grendel's Den, 459 U. S., at 126 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).6
B
The fact that this school district was created by a special and unusual Act of the legislature also gives reason for concern whether the benefit received by the Satmar community is one that the legislature will provide equally to other religious (and nonreligious) groups. This is the second malady
understanding was that if a non-Hasidic child were to move into the village, the district would pay tuition to send the child to one of the neighboring school districts, since Kiryas Joel would have no regular education program. Although the need for such a transfer has not yet arisen, there are 20 Hasidic children with handicapping conditions who transfer into Kiryas Joel's school district from the nearby East Ramapo and Monroe-Woodbury school districts.
6 Because it is the unusual circumstances of this district's creation that persuade us the State has employed a religious criterion for delegating political power, this conclusion does not imply that any political subdivision that is coterminous with the boundaries of a religiously homogeneous community suffers the same constitutional infirmity. The district in these cases is distinguishable from one whose boundaries are derived according to neutral historical and geographic criteria, but whose population happens to comprise coreligionists.
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