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Syllabus
nation, (2) whether the program defines its recipients by reference to religion, and (3) whether the aid creates an excessive entanglement between government and religion, id., at 234. Finally, the same criteria can be reviewed to determine whether a program constitutes endorsement of religion. Id., at 235. Respondents neither question the Chapter 2 program's secular purpose nor contend that it creates an excessive entanglement. Accordingly, the Court need ask only whether Chapter 2, as applied in Jefferson Parish, results in governmental indoctrination or defines its recipients by reference to religion. It is clear that Chapter 2 does not so define aid recipients. Rather, it uses wholly neutral and secular criteria to allocate aid to students enrolled in religious and secular schools alike. As to the indoctrination inquiry, the Chapter 2 program bears the same hallmarks of the program upheld in Agostini: Aid is allocated on the basis of neutral, secular criteria; it is supplementary to, and does not supplant, nonfederal funds; no Chapter 2 funds reach the coffers of religious schools; the aid is secular; evidence of actual diversion is de minimis; and the program includes adequate safeguards. Regardless of whether these factors are constitutional requirements, they are sufficient to find that the program at issue does not have the impermissible effect of advancing religion. For the same reasons, the Chapter 2 program cannot reasonably be viewed as an endorsement of religion. Pp. 844-849.
(c) Respondents' contentions that Agostini is distinguishable and that Meek and Wolman are controlling here must be rejected. Meek and Wolman created an inexplicable rift within the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Those decisions adhered to the prior holding in Board of Ed. of Central School Dist. No. 1 v. Allen, 392 U. S. 236, that statutes authorizing the lending of textbooks to religious school students did not violate the Establishment Clause, see, e. g., Meek, 421 U. S., at 359-362 (plurality opinion), but invalidated the lending of instructional materials and equipment to religious schools, e. g., id., at 362-366, on the ground that any assistance in support of the pervasively sectarian schools' educational missions would inevitably have the impermissible effect of advancing religion, see, e. g., id., at 365-366. The irrationality of this distinction is patent. See Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 110. Respondents' assertion that materials and equipment, unlike textbooks, are reasonably divertible to religious uses is rejected because it does not provide a logical distinction: An educator can use virtually any instructional tool, even a textbook, to teach a religious message. Pp. 849-857.
(d) The Court should follow the rule applied in the context of textbook lending programs: To establish a First Amendment violation, plaintiffs must prove that the aid actually is, or has been, used for religious
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