Cite as: 530 U. S. 793 (2000)
O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment
Thus, we held that the aid program "necessarily results in aid to the sectarian school enterprise as a whole," and "inescapably results in the direct and substantial advancement of religious activity." Meek, supra, at 366 (emphases added). Similarly, in Wolman, we concluded that, "[i]n view of the impossibility of separating the secular education function from the sectarian, the state aid inevitably flows in part in support of the religious role of the schools." 433 U. S., at 250 (emphasis added).
For whatever reason, the Court was not willing to extend this presumption of inevitable religious indoctrination to school aid when it instead consisted of textbooks lent free of charge. For example, in Meek, despite identifying the religious schools' secular educational functions and religious missions as inextricably intertwined, 421 U. S., at 366, the Court upheld the textbook lending program because "the record in the case . . . , like the record in Allen, contains no suggestion that religious textbooks will be lent or that the books provided will be used for anything other than purely secular purposes," id., at 361-362 (citation omitted). Accordingly, while the Court was willing to apply an irrebuttable presumption that secular instructional materials and equipment would be diverted to use for religious indoctrination, it required evidence that religious schools were diverting secular textbooks to religious instruction.
The inconsistency between the two strands of the Court's jurisprudence did not go unnoticed, as Justices on both sides of the Meek and Wolman decisions relied on the contradiction to support their respective arguments. See, e. g., Meek, 421 U. S., at 384 (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) ("[W]hat the Court says of the instructional materials and equipment may be said perhaps even more accurately of the textbooks" (citation omitted)); id., at 390 (Rehnquist, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part) ("The failure of the majority to justify the differing approaches to textbooks and instructional materials and
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