810
Opinion of Thomas, J.
ticular indoctrination. To put the point differently, if the government, seeking to further some legitimate secular purpose, offers aid on the same terms, without regard to religion, to all who adequately further that purpose, see Allen, 392 U. S., at 245-247 (discussing dual secular and religious purposes of religious schools), then it is fair to say that any aid going to a religious recipient only has the effect of furthering that secular purpose. The government, in crafting such an aid program, has had to conclude that a given level of aid is necessary to further that purpose among secular recipients and has provided no more than that same level to religious recipients.
As a way of assuring neutrality, we have repeatedly considered whether any governmental aid that goes to a religious institution does so "only as a result of the genuinely independent and private choices of individuals." Agostini, supra, at 226 (internal quotation marks omitted). We have viewed as significant whether the "private choices of individual parents," as opposed to the "unmediated" will of government, Ball, 473 U. S., at 395, n. 13 (internal quotation marks omitted), determine what schools ultimately benefit from the governmental aid, and how much. For if numerous private choices, rather than the single choice of a government, determine the distribution of aid pursuant to neutral eligibility criteria, then a government cannot, or at least cannot easily, grant special favors that might lead to a religious establishment. Private choice also helps guarantee neutrality by mitigating the preference for pre-existing recipients that is arguably inherent in any governmental aid program, see, e. g., Gilder, The Revitalization of Everything: The Law of the Microcosm, Harv. Bus. Rev. 49 (Mar. /Apr. 1988), and that could lead to a program inadvertently favoring one religion or favoring religious private schools in general over nonreligious ones.
The principles of neutrality and private choice, and their relationship to each other, were prominent not only in Agos-
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