Cite as: 536 U. S. 639 (2002)
Thomas, J., concurring
example of such failures. Besieged by escalating financial problems and declining academic achievement, the Cleveland City School District was in the midst of an academic emergency when Ohio enacted its scholarship program.
The dissents and respondents wish to invoke the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as incorporated through the Fourteenth, to constrain a State's neutral efforts to provide greater educational opportunity for underprivileged minority students. Today's decision properly upholds the program as constitutional, and I join it in full.
I
This Court has often considered whether efforts to provide children with the best educational resources conflict with constitutional limitations. Attempts to provide aid to religious schools or to allow some degree of religious involvement in public schools have generated significant controversy and litigation as States try to navigate the line between the secular and the religious in education. See generally Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Ed. of School Dist. No. 71, Champaign Cty., 333 U. S. 203, 237-238 (1948) (Jackson, J., concurring) (noting that the Constitution does not tell judges "where the secular ends and the sectarian begins in education"). We have recently decided several cases challenging federal aid programs that include religious schools. See, e. g., Mitchell v. Helms, 530 U. S. 793 (2000); Agostini v. Felton, 521 U. S. 203 (1997). To determine whether a federal program survives scrutiny under the Establishment Clause, we have considered whether it has a secular purpose and whether it has the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion. See Mitchell, supra, at 807-808. I agree with the Court that Ohio's program easily passes muster under our stringent test, but, as a matter of first principles, I question whether this test should be applied to the States.
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