116
Opinion of the Court
football games unconstitutional where the activity took place during a school-sponsored event and not in a public forum). We did not place independent significance on the fact that the graduation exercise might take place on school premises, Lee, supra, at 583. Here, where the school facilities are being used for a nonschool function and there is no government sponsorship of the Club's activities, Lee is inapposite.
Equally unsupportive is Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U. S. 578 (1987), in which we held that a Louisiana law that proscribed the teaching of evolution as part of the public school curriculum, unless accompanied by a lesson on creationism, violated the Establishment Clause. In Edwards, we mentioned that students are susceptible to pressure in the classroom, particularly given their possible reliance on teachers as role models. See id., at 584. But we did not discuss this concern in our application of the law to the facts. Moreover, we did note that mandatory attendance requirements meant that state advancement of religion in a school would be particularly harshly felt by impressionable students.6 But we did not suggest that, when the school was not actually advancing religion, the impressionability of students would be relevant to the Establishment Clause issue. Even if Edwards had articulated the principle Milford believes it did, the facts in Edwards are simply too remote from those here
6 Milford also cites Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Ed. of School Dist. No. 71, Champaign Cty., 333 U. S. 203 (1948), for its position that the Club's religious element would be advanced by the State through compulsory attendance laws. In McCollum, the school district excused students from their normal classroom study during the regular schoolday to attend classes taught by sectarian religious teachers, who were subject to approval by the school superintendent. Under these circumstances, this Court found it relevant that "[t]he operation of the State's compulsory education system . . . assist[ed] and [wa]s integrated with the program of religious instruction carried on by separate religious sects." Id., at 209. In the present case, there is simply no integration and cooperation between the school district and the Club. The Club's activities take place after the time when the children are compelled by state law to be at the school.
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