132
Stevens, J., dissenting
tend to separate young children into cliques that undermine the school's educational mission. Cf. Lehman v. Shaker Heights, 418 U. S. 298 (1974) (upholding a city's refusal to allow "political advertising" on public transportation).
School officials may reasonably believe that evangelical meetings designed to convert children to a particular religious faith pose the same risk. And, just as a school may allow meetings to discuss current events from a political perspective without also allowing organized political recruitment, so too can a school allow discussion of topics such as moral development from a religious (or nonreligious) perspective without thereby opening its forum to religious proselytizing or worship. See, e. g., Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish School Board, 231 F. 3d 937, 942 (CA5 2000) ("Under the Supreme Court's jurisprudence, a government entity such as a school board has the opportunity to open its facilities to activity protected by the First Amendment, without inviting political or religious activities presented in a form that would disserve its efforts to maintain neutrality"). Moreover, any doubt on a question such as this should be resolved in a way that minimizes "intrusion by the Federal Government into the operation of our public schools," Mergens, 496 U. S., at 290 (Stevens, J., dissenting); see also Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 104 (1968) ("Judicial interposition in the operation of the public school system of the Nation raises problems requiring care and restraint. . . . By and large, public education in our Nation is committed to the control of state and local authorities").
The particular limitation of the forum at issue in this case is one that prohibits the use of the school's facilities for "religious purposes." It is clear that, by "religious purposes," the school district did not intend to exclude all speech from a religious point of view. See App. N13-N15 (testimony of the superintendent for Milford schools indicating that the policy would permit people to teach "that man was created by God as described in the Book of Genesis" and that crime
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