Cite as: 512 U. S. 687 (1994)
Scalia, J., dissenting
(1) they created the district in an extraordinary manner—by special Act of the legislature, rather than under the State's general laws governing school-district reorganization; (2) the creation of the district ran counter to a state trend toward consolidation of school districts; and (3) the district includes only adherents of the Satmar religion. On this indictment, no jury would convict.
One difficulty with the first point is that it is not true. There was really nothing so "special" about the formation of a school district by an Act of the New York Legislature. The State has created both large school districts, see, e. g., 1972 N. Y. Laws, ch. 928 (creating the Gananda School District out of land previously in two other districts), and small specialized school districts for institutionalized children, see, e. g., 1972 N. Y. Laws, ch. 559 (creating a union free school district for the area owned by Abbott House), through these special Acts. But in any event all that the first point proves, and the second point as well (countering the trend toward consolidation),3 is that New York regarded Kiryas Joel as a
3 The Court says that "[e]arly on in the development of public education in New York, the State rejected highly localized school districts for New York City when they were promoted as a way to allow separate schooling for Roman Catholic children." Ante, at 704. Both the implication that this rejection of localism was general state policy, and the implication that (like the Court's prohibition of localism today) it had the purpose and effect of religious neutrality, are simply not faithful to the cited source. The 1841 proposal was not to treat New York City schools differently, in order to favor Roman Catholics; it was "that the state's school code, which promoted a district system structure with local taxing authority, be extended to New York City." R. Church & M. Sedlak, Education in the United States 167 (1976). And the rejection of that proposal was not a triumph for keeping sectarian religion out of some public schools; it was a triumph for keeping the King James version of the Bible in all public schools. The Court's selected source concludes: "[T]he Whigs swept the city elections that year [1842] and made Bible reading—the King James version—mandatory in any schools sharing these monies. There was nothing left for the Catholics to do but to build their own parochial system with their own money." Id., at 168-169.
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