722
Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment
Justice Kennedy, concurring in the judgment. The Court's ruling that the Kiryas Joel Village School District violates the Establishment Clause is in my view correct, but my reservations about what the Court's reasoning implies for religious accommodations in general are sufficient to require a separate writing. As the Court recognizes, a legislative accommodation that discriminates among religions may become an establishment of religion. But the Court's opinion can be interpreted to say that an accommodation for a particular religious group is invalid because of the risk that the legislature will not grant the same accommodation to another religious group suffering some similar burden. This rationale seems to me without grounding in our precedents and a needless restriction upon the legislature's ability to respond to the unique problems of a particular religious group. The real vice of the school district, in my estimation, is that New York created it by drawing political boundaries on the basis of religion. I would decide the issue we confront upon this narrower theory, though in accord with many of the Court's general observations about the State's actions in this litigation.
I
This is not an action in which the government has granted a benefit to a general class of recipients of which religious groups are just one part. See Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School Dist., 509 U. S. 1 (1993); Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U. S. 589 (1988); Witters v. Washington Dept. of Servs. for Blind, 474 U. S. 481 (1986); Mueller v. Allen, 463 U. S. 388 (1983). It is rather an action in which the government seeks to alleviate a specific burden on the religious practices of a particular religious group. I agree that a religious accommodation demands careful scrutiny to ensure that it does not so burden nonadherents or discriminate against other religions as to become an establishment. I disagree, however, with the suggestion that the Kiryas Joel Village School District contravenes these basic constitutional commands. But for the
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