694
Souter, J., dissenting
The aid in Mueller was in substance indistinguishable from that in Nyquist, see 463 U. S., at 396-397, n. 6, and both were substantively difficult to distinguish from aid directly to religious schools, id., at 399. But the Court upheld the Minnesota tax deductions in Mueller, emphasizing their neutral availability for religious and secular educational expenses and the role of private choice in taking them. Id., at 397- 398. The Court relied on the same two principles in Witters v. Washington Dept. of Servs. for Blind, 474 U. S. 481 (1986), approving one student's use of a vocational training subsidy for the blind at a religious college, characterizing it as aid to individuals from which religious schools could derive no "large" benefit: "the full benefits of the program [are not] limited, in large part or in whole, to students at sectarian institutions." Id., at 488.
School Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball, 473 U. S. 373, 395- 396, and n. 13 (1985), overruled in part by Agostini v. Felton, 521 U. S. 203 (1997), clarified that the notions of evenhandedness neutrality and private choice in Mueller did not apply to cases involving direct aid to religious schools, which were still subject to the divertibility test. But in Agostini, where the substance of the aid was identical to that in Ball, public employees teaching remedial secular classes in private schools, the Court rejected the 30-year-old presumption of divertibility, and instead found it sufficient that the aid "supplement[ed]" but did not "supplant" existing educational services, 521 U. S., at 210, 230. The Court, contrary to Ball, viewed the aid as aid "directly to the eligible students . . . no matter where they choose to attend school." 521 U. S., at 229.
In the 12 years between Ball and Agostini, the Court decided not only Witters, but two other cases emphasizing the form of neutrality and private choice over the substance of aid to religious uses, but always in circumstances where any aid to religion was isolated and insubstantial. Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School Dist., 509 U. S. 1 (1993), like Wit-
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