Cite as: 536 U. S. 639 (2002)
Souter, J., dissenting
rion will yield if the identification of relevant choices is wide open. If the choice of relevant alternatives is an open one, proponents of voucher aid will always win, because they will always be able to find a "choice" somewhere that will show the bulk of public spending to be secular. The choice enquiry will be diluted to the point that it can screen out nothing, and the result will always be determined by selecting the alternatives to be treated as choices.
Confining the relevant choices to spending choices, on the other hand, is not vulnerable to comparable criticism. Although leaving the selection of alternatives for choice wide open, as the majority would, virtually guarantees the availability of a "choice" that will satisfy the criterion, limiting the choices to spending choices will not guarantee a negative result in every case. There may, after all, be cases in which a voucher recipient will have a real choice, with enough secular private school desks in relation to the number of religious ones, and a voucher amount high enough to meet secular private school tuition levels. See infra, at 704-707. But, even to the extent that choice-to-spend does tend to limit the number of religious funding options that pass muster, the choice criterion has to be understood this way in order, as I have said, for it to function as a limiting principle.9 Otherwise
9 The need for a limit is one answer to Justice O'Connor, who argues at length that community schools should factor in the "private choice" calculus. Ante, at 672-673 (concurring opinion). To be fair, community schools do exhibit some features of private schools: they are autonomously managed without any interference from the school district or State and two have prior histories as private schools. It may be, then, that community schools might arguably count as choices because they are not like other public schools run by the State or municipality, but in substance merely private schools with state funding outside the voucher program.
But once any public school is deemed a relevant object of choice, there is no stopping this progression. For example, both the majority and Justice O'Connor characterize public magnet schools as an independent category of genuine educational options, simply because they are "nontraditional" public schools. But they do not share the "private school" features of community schools, and the only thing that distinguishes them
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