Cite as: 536 U. S. 639 (2002)
Souter, J., dissenting
schools. Neither did any condition of Zobrest's interpreter's subsidy favor religious education. See 509 U. S., at 10.
In order to apply the neutrality test, then, it makes sense to focus on a category of aid that may be directed to religious as well as secular schools, and ask whether the scheme favors a religious direction. Here, one would ask whether the voucher provisions, allowing for as much as $2,250 toward private school tuition (or a grant to a public school in an adjacent district), were written in a way that skewed the scheme toward benefiting religious schools.
This, however, is not what the majority asks. The majority looks not to the provisions for tuition vouchers, Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 3313.976 (West Supp. 2002), but to every provision for educational opportunity: "The program permits the participation of all schools within the district, [as well as public schools in adjacent districts], religious or nonreligious." Ante, at 653 (emphasis in original). The majority then finds confirmation that "participation of all schools" satisfies neutrality by noting that the better part of total state educational expenditure goes to public schools, ante, at 654, thus showing there is no favor of religion.
The illogic is patent. If regular, public schools (which can get no voucher payments) "participate" in a voucher scheme with schools that can, and public expenditure is still predominantly on public schools, then the majority's reasoning would find neutrality in a scheme of vouchers available for private tuition in districts with no secular private schools at all. "Neutrality" as the majority employs the term is, literally, verbal and nothing more. This, indeed, is the only way the majority can gloss over the very nonneutral feature of the total scheme covering "all schools": public tutors may receive from the State no more than $324 per child to support extra tutoring (that is, the State's 90% of a total amount of $360), App. 166a, whereas the tuition voucher schools (which
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