Cite as: 518 U. S. 515 (1996)
Scalia, J., dissenting
the Court will disclaim the reasoning it has used today to destroy VMI. The Government, in its briefs to this Court, at least purports to address the consequences of its attack on VMI for public support of private single-sex education. It contends that private colleges that are the direct or indirect beneficiaries of government funding are not thereby necessarily converted into state actors to which the Equal Protection Clause is then applicable. See Brief for United States in No. 94-2107, at 35-37 (discussing Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 U. S. 830 (1982), and Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U. S. 991 (1982)). That is true. It is also virtually meaningless.
The issue will be not whether government assistance turns private colleges into state actors, but whether the government itself would be violating the Constitution by providing state support to single-sex colleges. For example, in Nor-wood v. Harrison, 413 U. S. 455 (1973), we saw no room to distinguish between state operation of racially segregated schools and state support of privately run segregated schools. "Racial discrimination in state-operated schools is barred by the Constitution and '[i]t is also axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.' " Id., at 465 (quoting Lee v. Macon County Bd. of Ed., 267 F. Supp. 458, 475-476 (MD Ala. 1967)); see also Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U. S. 1, 19 (1958) ("State support of segregated schools through any arrangement, management, funds, or property cannot be squared with the [Fourteenth] Amendment's command that no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"); Grove City College v. Bell, 465 U. S. 555, 565 (1984) (case arising under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and stating that "[t]he economic effect of direct and indirect assistance often is indistinguishable"). When the Government was pressed at oral argument concerning the implications of these cases for private single-sex education if government-provided single-sex education is unconstitu-
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