Cite as: 536 U. S. 639 (2002)
Souter, J., dissenting
It is not, of course, that I think even a genuine choice criterion is up to the task of the Establishment Clause when substantial state funds go to religious teaching; the discussion in Part III, infra, shows that it is not. The point is simply that if the majority wishes to claim that choice is a criterion, it must define choice in a way that can function as a criterion with a practical capacity to screen something out.
If, contrary to the majority, we ask the right question about genuine choice to use the vouchers, the answer shows that something is influencing choices in a way that aims the money in a religious direction: of 56 private schools in the district participating in the voucher program (only 53 of which accepted voucher students in 1999-2000), 46 of them are religious; 96.6% of all voucher recipients go to religious schools, only 3.4% to nonreligious ones. See App. 281a- 286a. Unfortunately for the majority position, there is no explanation for this that suggests the religious direction results simply from free choices by parents. One answer to these statistics, for example, which would be consistent with the genuine choice claimed to be operating, might be that 96.6% of families choosing to avail themselves of vouchers choose to educate their children in schools of their own religion. This would not, in my view, render the scheme constitutional, but it would speak to the majority's choice criterion.
in the Cleveland City School District were proficient in math, as compared with 3.3% in Hope Chapelside and 0% in Hope Cathedral).
I think that objective academic excellence should be the benchmark in comparing schools under the majority's test; Justice O'Connor prefers comparing educational options on the basis of subjective "parental satisfaction," ante, at 675, and I am sure there are other plausible ways to evaluate "genuine choices." Until now, our cases have never talked about the quality of educational options by whatever standard, but now that every educational option is a relevant "choice," this is what the "genuine and independent private choice" enquiry, ante, at 652 (opinion of the Court), would seem to require if it is to have any meaning at all. But if that is what genuine choice means, what does this enquiry have to do with the Establishment Clause?
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