Cite as: 512 U. S. 687 (1994)
Scalia, J., dissenting
almost without limit. The separate Kiryas Joel school district is problematic in his view because "[t]he isolation of these children, while it may protect them from 'panic, fear and trauma,' also unquestionably increased the likelihood that they would remain within the fold, faithful adherents of their parents' religious faith." Ante, at 711. So much for family values. If the Constitution forbids any state action that incidentally helps parents to raise their children in their own religious faith, it would invalidate a release program permitting public school children to attend the religious-instruction program of their parents' choice, of the sort we approved in Zorach; 6 indeed, it would invalidate state laws according parents physical control over their children, at least insofar as that is used to take the little fellows to church or synagogue. Justice Stevens' statement is less a legal analysis than a manifesto of secularism. It surpasses mere rejection of accommodation, and announces a positive hostility to religion—which, unlike all other noncriminal values, the State must not assist parents in transmitting to their offspring.
Justice Kennedy's "political-line-drawing" approach founders on its own terms. He concedes that the Constitution does not prevent people who share a faith from forming their own villages and towns, and suggests that the formation of the village of Kiryas Joel was free from defect. Ante, at 729-730. He also notes that States are free to draw political lines on the basis of history and geography. Ante, at 730. I do not see, then, how a school district drawn to mirror the boundaries of an existing village (an existing geographic line), which itself is not infirm, can violate the Constitution. Thus, while Justice Kennedy purports to share my criticism (Part IV, supra) of the Court's unprecedented insistence that the New York Legislature make its accommo-6 Justice Stevens' bald statement that such a program would be permissible, see ante, at 711-712, can exclude it from the reach of his opinion, but not from the reach of his logic.
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