788
Opinion of Souter, J.
of Christian faith, then it necessarily follows that the practice must be enjoined." 492 U. S., at 612. Notably, we did not say that it was only a "particular government proclamation" that could have such an unconstitutional effect, nor does the passage imply anything of the kind.
The significance of the fact that the Court in Allegheny did not intend to lay down a per se rule in the way suggested by the plurality today has been confirmed by subsequent cases. In Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens, 496 U. S. 226 (1990), six Justices applied the endorsement test to decide whether the Establishment Clause would be violated by a public high school's application of the Equal Access Act, Pub. L. 98-377, 98 Stat. 1302, 20 U. S. C. §§ 4071-4074, to allow students to form a religious club having the same access to meeting facilities as other "noncurricular" groups organized by students. A plurality of four Justices concluded that such an equal access policy "does not convey a message of state approval or endorsement of the particular religion" espoused by the student religious group. 496 U. S., at 252 (O'Connor, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J., and White and Blackmun, JJ.). Two others concurred in the judgment in order "to emphasize the steps [the school] must take to avoid appearing to endorse the [religious] club's goals." Id., at 263 (opinion of Marshall, J., joined by Brennan, J.); see also id., at 264 ("If public schools are perceived as conferring the imprimatur of the State on religious doctrine or practice as a result of such a policy, the nominally 'neutral' character of the policy will not save it from running afoul of the Establishment Clause") (emphasis in original).
What is important is that, even though Mergens involved private religious speech in a nondiscriminatory " 'limited open forum,' " id., at 233, 247, a majority of the Court reached the conclusion in the case not by applying an irrebut-table presumption, as the plurality does today, but by making a contextual judgment taking account of the circum-
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