220
Opinion of the Court
monitor the courses for religious content. Id., at 387. Notably, the Court disregarded the lack of evidence of any specific incidents of religious indoctrination as largely irrelevant, reasoning that potential witnesses to any indoctrination—the parochial school students, their parents, or parochial school officials—might be unable to detect or have little incentive to report the incidents. Id., at 388-389.
The presence of public teachers on parochial school grounds had a second, related impermissible effect: It created a "graphic symbol of the 'concert or union or dependency' of church and state," id., at 391 (quoting Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 312 (1952)), especially when perceived by "children in their formative years," 473 U. S., at 390. The Court feared that this perception of a symbolic union between church and state would "conve[y] a message of government endorsement . . . of religion" and thereby violate a "core purpose" of the Establishment Clause. Id., at 389.
Third, the Court found that the Shared Time program impermissibly financed religious indoctrination by subsidizing "the primary religious mission of the institutions affected." Id., at 385. The Court separated its prior decisions evaluating programs that aided the secular activities of religious institutions into two categories: those in which it concluded that the aid resulted in an effect that was "indirect, remote, or incidental" (and upheld the aid); and those in which it concluded that the aid resulted in "a direct and substantial advancement of the sectarian enterprise" (and invalidated the aid). Id., at 393 (internal quotation marks omitted). In light of Meek and Wolman, Grand Rapids' program fell into the latter category. In those cases, the Court ruled that a state loan of instructional equipment and materials to parochial schools was an impermissible form of "direct aid" because it "advanced the primary, religion-oriented educational function of the sectarian school," 473 U. S., at 395 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted), by providing "in-
Page: Index Previous 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007