772
Opinion of O'Connor, J.
before us. In the end, there may be much less here than meets the eye.
Justice O'Connor, with whom Justice Souter and Justice Breyer join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join Parts I, II, and III of the Court's opinion and concur in the judgment. Despite the messages of bigotry and racism that may be conveyed along with religious connotations by the display of a Ku Klux Klan cross, see ante, at 771 (Thomas, J., concurring), at bottom this case must be understood as it has been presented to us—as a case about private religious expression and whether the State's relationship to it violates the Establishment Clause. In my view, "the endorsement test asks the right question about governmental practices challenged on Establishment Clause grounds, including challenged practices involving the display of religious symbols," County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U. S. 573, 628 (1989) (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment), even where a neutral state policy toward private religious speech in a public forum is at issue. Accordingly, I see no necessity to carve out, as the plurality opinion would today, an exception to the endorsement test for the public forum context.
For the reasons given by Justice Souter, whose opinion I also join, I conclude on the facts of this case that there is "no realistic danger that the community would think that the [State] was endorsing religion or any particular creed," Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384, 395 (1993), by granting respondents a permit to erect their temporary cross on Capitol Square. I write separately, however, to emphasize that, because it seeks to identify those situations in which government makes " 'adherence to a religion relevant . . . to a person's standing in the political community,' " Allegheny, supra, at 594 (quoting
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