Cite as: 530 U. S. 793 (2000)
Souter, J., dissenting
641 (Douglas, J., concurring); Levitt, 413 U. S., at 480; Meek, 421 U. S., at 369-371; Wolman, 433 U. S., at 249-250 (discussing nonseverability of religious and secular education); Ball, 473 U. S., at 399-400 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part), overruled in part by Agostini, 521 U. S., at 236. As religious teaching cannot be separated from secular education in such schools or by such teachers, we have concluded that direct government subsidies to such schools are prohibited because they will inevitably and impermissibly support religious indoctrination. Zobrest, 509 U. S., at 12 (discussing Meek and Ball).
Second, we have expressed special concern about aid to primary and secondary religious schools. Tilton, 403 U. S., at 685-686. On the one hand, we have understood how the youth of the students in such schools makes them highly susceptible to religious indoctrination. Lemon, supra, at 616 ("This process of inculcating religious doctrine is, of course, enhanced by the impressionable age of the pupils, in primary schools particularly"). On the other, we have recognized that the religious element in the education offered in most sectarian primary and secondary schools is far more intertwined with the secular than in university teaching, where the natural and academic skepticism of most older students may separate the two, see Tilton, supra, at 686-689; Roemer, 426 U. S., at 750. Thus, government benefits accruing to these pervasively religious primary and secondary schools raise special dangers of diversion into support for the religious indoctrination of children and the involvement of government in religious training and practice.
man v. Walter, 433 U. S. 229, 249-250 (1977); School Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball, 473 U. S. 373, 399-400 (1985) (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part), overruled in part by Agostini, supra, at 236. Cf. NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U. S. 490, 504 (1979) ("The church-teacher relationship in a church-operated school differs from the employment relationship in a public or other nonreligious school").
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