Cite as: 515 U. S. 819 (1995)
Souter, J., dissenting
this indeed were a critical distinction, the Constitution would permit a State to pay all the bills of any religious institution; 10 in fact, despite the Court's purported adherence to the no-direct-funding principle, the State could simply hand out credit cards to religious institutions and honor the monthly statements (so long as someone could devise an evenhanded umbrella to cover the whole scheme). Witters and the other cases cannot be distinguished out of existence this way.
2
It is more probable, however, that the Court's reference to the printer goes to a different attempt to justify the payment. On this purported justification, the payment to the printer is significant only as the last step in an argument resting on the assumption that a public university may give a religious group the use of any of its equipment or facilities so long as secular groups are likewise eligible. The Court starts with the cases of Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263 (1981), Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens, 496 U. S. 226 (1990), and Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384 (1993), in which religious groups were held to be entitled to access for speaking in government buildings open generally for that purpose. The Court reasons that the availability of a forum has economic value (the government built and maintained the building, while the speakers saved the rent for a hall); and that economically there is no difference be-10 The Court acknowledges that "if the State pays a church's bills it is subsidizing it," and concedes that "we must guard against this abuse." Ante, at 844. These concerns are not present here, the Court contends, because Wide Awake "is not a religious institution, at least in the usual sense of that term as used in our case law." Ibid. The Court's concession suggests that its distinction between paying a religious institution and paying a religious institution's bills is not really significant. But if the Court is relying on its characterization of Wide Awake as not a religious institution, "at least in the usual sense," the Court could presumably stop right there.
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