Cite as: 536 U. S. 639 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
Respondents finally claim that we should look to Committee for Public Ed. & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756 (1973), to decide these cases. We disagree for two reasons. First, the program in Nyquist was quite different from the program challenged here. Nyquist involved a New York program that gave a package of benefits exclusively to private schools and the parents of private school enroll-ees. Although the program was enacted for ostensibly secular purposes, id., at 773-774, we found that its "function" was "unmistakably to provide desired financial support for nonpublic, sectarian institutions," id., at 783 (emphasis added). Its genesis, we said, was that private religious schools faced "increasingly grave fiscal problems." Id., at 795. The program thus provided direct money grants to religious schools. Id., at 762-764. It provided tax benefits "unrelated to the amount of money actually expended by any parent on tuition," ensuring a windfall to parents of children in religious schools. Id., at 790. It similarly provided tuition reimbursements designed explicitly to "offe[r] . . . an incentive to parents to send their children to sectarian schools." Id., at 786. Indeed, the program flatly prohibited the participation of any public school, or parent of any public school enrollee. Id., at 763-765. Ohio's program shares none of these features.
Second, were there any doubt that the program challenged in Nyquist is far removed from the program challenged here, we expressly reserved judgment with respect to "a case involving some form of public assistance (e. g., scholarships) made available generally without regard to the sectarian-nonsectarian, or public-nonpublic nature of the institution benefited." Id., at 782-783, n. 38. That, of course, is the very question now before us, and it has since been answered, first in Mueller, 463 U. S., at 398-399 ("[A] program . . . that neutrally provides state assistance to a broad spectrum of citizens is not readily subject to challenge under the Establishment Clause" (citing Nyquist, supra, at 782-783, n. 38)),
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