734
Scalia, J., dissenting
a public school? As the Court noted in Wolman, the constitutional dangers of establishment arise "from the nature of the institution, not from the nature of the pupils," 433 U. S., at 248. There is no danger in educating religious students in a public school.
For these very good reasons, Justice Souter's opinion does not focus upon the school, but rather upon the school district and the New York Legislature that created it. His arguments, though sometimes intermingled, are two: that reposing governmental power in the Kiryas Joel school district is the same as reposing governmental power in a religious group; and that in enacting the statute creating the district, the New York State Legislature was discriminating on the basis of religion, i. e., favoring the Satmar Hasidim over others. I shall discuss these arguments in turn.
II
For his thesis that New York has unconstitutionally conferred governmental authority upon the Satmar sect, Justice Souter relies extensively, and virtually exclusively, upon Larkin v. Grendel's Den, Inc., 459 U. S. 116 (1982). Justice Souter believes that the present litigation "resembles" Grendel's Den because that case "teaches that a State may not delegate its civic authority to a group chosen according to a religious criterion," ante, at 698 (emphasis added). That misdescribes both what that case taught (which is that a State may not delegate its civil authority to a church), and what these cases involve (which is a group chosen according to cultural characteristics). The statute at issue there gave churches veto power over the State's authority to grant a liquor license to establishments in the vicinity of the church. The Court had little difficulty finding the statute unconstitutional. "The Framers did not set up a system of government in which important, discretionary governmental powers would be delegated to or shared with religious institutions." 459 U. S., at 127.
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