Cite as: 515 U. S. 819 (1995)
Souter, J., dissenting
to parochial schools, wrong to allow a grantee of special education funds to spend them at a religious college? These are the questions that call for drawing lines, and it is in drawing them that evenhandedness becomes important. However the Court may in the past have phrased its line-drawing test, the question whether such benefits are provided on an evenhanded basis has been relevant, for the question addresses one aspect of the issue whether a law is truly neutral with respect to religion (that is, whether the law either "advance[s] [or] inhibit[s] religion," County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U. S. 573, 592 (1989)). In Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263, 274 (1981), for example, we noted that "[t]he provision of benefits to [a] broad . . . spectrum of [religious and nonreligious] groups is an important index of secular effect." See also Board of Ed. of Kiryas Joel Village School Dist. v. Grumet, 512 U. S. 687, 702-705 (1994). In the doubtful cases (those not involving direct public funding), where there is initially room for argument about a law's effect, evenhandedness serves to weed out those laws that impermissibly advance religion by channelling aid to it exclusively. Evenhandedness is therefore a prerequisite to further enquiry into the constitutionality of a doubtful law,5 but evenhandedness goes no further. It does not guarantee success under Establishment Clause scrutiny.
Three cases permitting indirect aid to religion, Mueller v. Allen, 463 U. S. 388 (1983), Witters v. Washington Dept. of Servs. for Blind, 474 U. S. 481 (1986), and Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School Dist., 509 U. S. 1 (1993), are among the latest of those to illustrate this relevance of evenhandedness when advancement is not so obvious as to be patently uncon-5 In a narrow band of cases at the polar extreme from direct funding cases, those involving essential public benefits commonly associated with living in an organized society (like police and fire protection, for example), evenhandedness may become important to ensuring that religious interests are not inhibited.
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