822
Opinion of Thomas, J.
government-provided interpreter in Zobrest was not only divertible, but actually diverted.
Respondents appear to rely on Meek and Wolman to establish their rule against "divertible" aid. But those cases offer little, if any, support for respondents. Meek mentioned divertibility only briefly in a concluding footnote, see 421 U. S., at 366, n. 16, and that mention was, at most, peripheral to the Court's reasoning in striking down the lending of instructional materials and equipment. The aid program in Wolman explicitly barred divertible aid, 433 U. S., at 248- 249, so a concern for divertibility could not have been part of our reason for finding that program invalid.
The issue is not divertibility of aid but rather whether the aid itself has an impermissible content. Where the aid would be suitable for use in a public school, it is also suitable for use in any private school. Similarly, the prohibition against the government providing impermissible content resolves the Establishment Clause concerns that exist if aid is actually diverted to religious uses.9 In Agostini, we explained Zobrest by making just this distinction between the content of aid and the use of that aid: "Because the only government aid in Zobrest was the interpreter, who was herself not inculcating any religious messages, no government indoctrination took place." 521 U. S., at 224 (second emphasis added). Agostini also acknowledged that what the dissenters in Zobrest had charged was essentially true: Zobrest did effect a "shift . . . in our Establishment Clause law." 521 U. S., at 225. The interpreter herself, assuming that she
9 The dissent would find an establishment of religion if a government-provided projector were used in a religious school to show a privately purchased religious film, even though a public school that possessed the same kind of projector would likely be constitutionally barred from refusing to allow a student bible club to use that projector in a classroom to show the very same film, where the classrooms and projectors were generally available to student groups. See Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384 (1993).
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