SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES - No. 94-329 - RONALD W. ROSENBERGER, et al., PETITIONE

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 94-329
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RONALD W. ROSENBERGER, et al., PETITIONERS
v. RECTOR and VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY
OF VIRGINIA et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the fourth circuit
[June 29, 1995]

  Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens,
Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer join, dissenting.
  The Court today, for the first time, approves direct
funding of core religious activities by an arm of the
State.  It does so, however, only after erroneous treat-
ment of some familiar principles of law implementing
the First Amendment's Establishment and Speech
Clauses, and by viewing the very funds in question as
beyond the reach of the Establishment Clause's funding
restrictions as such.  Because there is no warrant for
distinguishing among public funding sources for purposes
of applying the First Amendment's prohibition of
religious establishment, I would hold that the
University's refusal to support petitioners' religious
activities is compelled by the Establishment Clause.  I
would therefore affirm.

                      I
  The central question in this case is whether a grant
from the Student Activities Fund to pay Wide Awake's
printing expenses would violate the Establishment
Clause.  Although the Court does not dwell on the
details of Wide Awake's message, it recognizes some-
thing sufficiently religious in the publication to demand
Establishment Clause scrutiny.  Although the Court
places great stress on the eligibility of secular as well as
religious activities for grants from the Student Activities
Fund, it recognizes that such evenhanded availability is
not by itself enough to satisfy constitutional require-
ments for any aid scheme that results in a benefit to
religion.  Ante, at 18; see also ante, at 1-3 (O'Connor,
J., concurring).  Something more is necessary to justify
any religious aid.  Some members of the Court, at least,
may think the funding permissible on a view that it is
indirect, since the money goes to Wide Awake's printer,
not through Wide Awake's own checking account.  The
Court's principal reliance, however, is on an argument
that providing religion with economically valuable
services is permissible on the theory that services are
economically indistinguishable from religious access to
governmental speech forums, which sometimes is
permissible.  But this reasoning would commit the Court
to approving direct religious aid beyond anything
justifiable for the sake of access to speaking forums. 
The Court implicitly recognizes this in its further
attempt to circumvent the clear bar to direct governmen-
tal aid to religion.  Different members of the Court seek
to avoid this bar in different ways.  The opinion of the
Court makes the novel assumption that only direct aid
financed with tax revenue is barred, and draws the
erroneous conclusion that the involuntary Student
Activities Fee is not a tax.  I do not read Justice
O'Connor's opinion as sharing that assumption; she
places this Student Activities Fund in a category of
student funding enterprises from which religious activi-
ties in public universities may benefit, so long as there
is no consequent endorsement of religion.  The resulting
decision is in unmistakable tension with the accepted
law that the Court continues to avow.

                      A
  The Court's difficulties will be all the more clear after
a closer look at Wide Awake than the majority opinion
affords.  The character of the magazine is candidly
disclosed on the opening page of the first issue, where
the editor-in-chief announces Wide Awake's mission in
a letter to the readership signed, -Love in Christ-: it is
-to challenge Christians to live, in word and deed,
according to the faith they proclaim and to encourage
students to consider what a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ means.-  App. 45.  The masthead of every
issue bears St. Paul's exhortation, that -[t]he hour has
come for you to awake from your slumber, because our
salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 
Romans 13:11.-
  Each issue of Wide Awake contained in the record
makes good on the editor's promise and echoes the
Apostle's call to accept salvation:
-The only way to salvation through Him is by
confessing and repenting of sin.  It is the Christian's
duty to make sinners aware of their need for
salvation.  Thus, Christians must confront and
condemn sin, or else they fail in their duty of love.- 
Mourad & Prince, A Love/Hate Relationship, Novem-
ber/December 1990, p. 3.
-When you get to the final gate, the Lord will be
handing out boarding passes, and He will examine
your ticket.  If, in your lifetime, you did not request
a seat on His Friendly Skies Flyer by trusting Him
and asking Him to be your pilot, then you will not
be on His list of reserved seats (and the Lord will
know you not).  You will not be able to buy a ticket
then; no amount of money or desire will do the
trick.  You will be met by your chosen pilot and
flown straight to Hell on an express jet (without air
conditioning or toilets, of course).-  Ace, The Plane
Truth, id., at 3.
-`Go into all the world and preach the good news to
all creation.' (Mark 16:15)  The Great Commission
is the prime-directive for our lives as Christians
. . . .-  Liu, Christianity and the Five-legged Stool,
September/October 1991, p. 3.
-The Spirit provides access to an intimate relation-
ship with the Lord of the Universe, awakens our
minds to comprehend spiritual truth and empowers
us to serve as effective ambassadors for the Lord
Jesus in our earthly lives.-  Buterbaugh, A Spiritual
Advantage, March/April 1991, p. 21.
  There is no need to quote further from articles of like
tenor, but one could examine such other examples as
religious poetry, see Macpherson, I Have Started
Searching for Angels, November/December 1990, p. 18;
religious textual analysis and commentary, see
Buterbaugh, Colossians 1:1-14: Abundant Life, id., at 20;
Buterbaugh, John 14-16: A Spiritual Advantage,
March/April, pp. 20-21; and instruction on religious
practice, see Early, Thanksgiving and Prayer, Novem-
ber/December 1990, p. 21 (providing readers with
suggested prayers and posing contemplative questions
about biblical texts); Early, Hope and Spirit, March/April
1991, p. 21 (similar).
  Even featured essays on facially secular topics become
platforms from which to call readers to fulfill the tenets
of Christianity in their lives.  Although a piece on
racism has some general discussion on the subject, it
proceeds beyond even the analysis and interpretation of
biblical texts to conclude with the counsel to take action
because that is the Christian thing to do:
-God calls us to take the risks of voluntarily step-
ping out of our comfort zones and to take joy in the
whole richness of our inheritance in the body of
Christ.  We must take the love we receive from God
and share it with all peoples of the world.
     -Racism is a disease of the heart, soul, and mind,
and only when it is extirpated from the individ-
ual consciousness and replaced with the love and
peace of God will true personal and communal
healing begin.-  Liu, et al., -Eracing- Mistakes,
November/December 1990, p. 14.
The same progression occurs in an article on eating
disorders, which begins with descriptions of anorexia and
bulimia and ends with this religious message:
-As thinking people who profess a belief in God,
we must grasp firmly the truth, the reality of who
we are because of Christ.  Christ is the Bread of
Life (John 6:35).  Through Him, we are full.  He
alone can provide the ultimate source of spiritual
fulfillment which permeates the emotional, psycho-
logical, and physical dimensions of our lives.- 
Ferguson & Lassiter, From Calorie to Calvary,
September/October 1991, p. 14.
  This writing is no merely descriptive examination of
religious doctrine or even of ideal Christian practice in
confronting life's social and personal problems.  Nor is
it merely the expression of editorial opinion that
incidentally coincides with Christian ethics and reflects
a Christian view of human obligation.  It is straightfor-
ward exhortation to enter into a relationship with God
as revealed in Jesus Christ, and to satisfy a series of
moral obligations derived from the teachings of Jesus
Christ.  These are not the words of -student news,
information, opinion, entertainment, or academic
communicatio[n] . . .-  (in the language of the
University's funding criterion, App. to Pet. for Cert.
61a), but the words of -challenge [to] Christians to live,
in word and deed, according to the faith they proclaim
and  . . . to consider what a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ means- (in the language of Wide Awake's
founder, App. 45).  The subject is not the discourse of
the scholar's study or the seminar room, but of the
evangelist's mission station and the pulpit.  It is nothing
other than the preaching of the word, which (along with
the sacraments) is what most branches of Christianity
offer those called to the religious life.
  Using public funds for the direct subsidization of
preaching the word is categorically forbidden under the
Establishment Clause, and if the Clause was meant to
accomplish nothing else, it was meant to bar this use of
public money.  Evidence on the subject antedates even
the Bill of Rights itself, as may be seen in the writings
of Madison, whose authority on questions about the
meaning of the Establishment Clause is well settled,
e.g., Committee for Public Ed. & Religious Liberty v.
Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756, 770, n. 28 (1973); Everson v.
Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1, 13 (1947).  Four
years before the First Congress proposed the First
Amendment, Madison gave his opinion on the legitimacy
of using public funds for religious purposes, in the
Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assess-
ments, which played the central role in ensuring the
defeat of the Virginia tax assessment bill in 1786 and
framed the debate upon which the Religion Clauses
stand: 
-Who does not see that . . . the same authority
which can force a citizen to contribute three pence
only of his property for the support of any one
establishment, may force him to conform to any
other establishment in all cases whatsoever?-  James
Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against
Religious Assessments -3 (hereinafter Madison's
Remonstrance), reprinted in Everson, supra, at
65-66 (appendix to dissent of Rutledge, J.).
  Madison wrote against a background in which nearly
every Colony had exacted a tax for church support,
Everson, supra, at 10, n. 8, the practice having become
-so commonplace as to shock the freedom-loving colonials
into a feeling of abhorrence,- 330 U. S., at 11 (footnote
omitted).  Madison's Remonstrance captured the
colonists' -conviction that individual religious liberty
could be achieved best under a government which was
stripped of all power to tax, to support, or otherwise to
assist any or all religions, or to interfere with the beliefs
of any religious individual or group.-  Ibid.  Their
sentiment as expressed by Madison in Virginia, led not
only to the defeat of Virginia's tax assessment bill, but
also directly to passage of the Virginia Bill for Establish-
ing Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson. 
That bill's preamble declared that -to compel a man to
furnish contributions of money for the propagation of
opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical,-
Jefferson, A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom,
reprinted in 5 The Founder's Constitution 84-85 (P.
Kurland & R. Lerner eds. 1987), and its text provided
-[t]hat no man shall be compelled to frequent or support
any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever
. . . .,- ibid.  See generally Everson, supra, at 13.  We
have -previously recognized that the provisions of the
First Amendment, in the drafting and adoption of which
Madison and Jefferson played such leading roles, had
the same objective and were intended to provide the
same protection against governmental intrusion on
religious liberty as the Virginia statute.-  Ibid.; see also
Laycock, -Nonpreferential- Aid to Religion: A False
Claim About Original Intent, 27 Wm. & Mary L. Rev.
875, 921, 923 (1986) (-[I]f the debates of the 1780's
support any proposition, it is that the Framers opposed
government financial support for religion. . . .  They did
not substitute small taxes for large taxes; three pence
was as bad as any larger sum.  The principle was what
mattered.  With respect to money, religion was to be
wholly voluntary.  Churches either would support
themselves or they would not, but the government would
neither help nor interfere-) (footnote omitted); T. Curry,
The First Freedoms 217 (1986) (At the time of the
framing of the Bill of Rights, -[t]he belief that govern-
ment assistance to religion, especially in the form of
taxes, violated religious liberty had a long history-); J.
Choper, Securing Religious Liberty 16 (1995) (-There is
broad consensus that a central threat to the religious
freedom of individuals and groups-indeed, in the
judgment of many the most serious infringement upon
religious liberty-is posed by forcing them to pay taxes
in support of a religious establishment or religious
activities-) (footnotes omitted; internal quotation marks
omitted).
  The principle against direct funding with public money
is patently violated by the contested use of today's
student activity fee.  Like today's taxes generally, the
fee is Madison's threepence.  The University exercises
the power of the State to compel a student to pay it, see
Jefferson's Preamble, supra, and the use of any part of
it for the direct support of religious activity thus strikes
at what we have repeatedly held to be the heart of the
prohibition on establishment.  Everson, 330 U. S., at 15-
16 (-The `establishment of religion clause' . . . means at
least this . . . .  No tax in any amount, large or small,
can be levied to support any religious activities or insti-
tutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form
they may adopt to teach or practice religion-); see School
Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball, 473 U. S. 373, 385 (1985)
(-Although Establishment Clause jurisprudence is char-
acterized by few absolutes, the Clause does absolutely
prohibit government-financed or government-sponsored
indoctrination into the beliefs of a particular religious
faith-); Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, 413
U. S., at 780 (-In the absence of an effective means of
guaranteeing that the state aid derived from public
funds will be used exclusively for secular, neutral, and
nonideological purposes, it is clear from our cases that
direct aid in whatever form is invalid-); id., at 772
(-Primary among those evils- against which the Estab-
lishment Clause guards -have been sponsorship, financial
support, and active involvement of the sovereign in
religious activity-) (citations and internal quotation
marks omitted); see also Lee v. Weisman, 505 U. S. 577,
640 (1992) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (-The coercion that
was a hallmark of historical establishments of religion
was coercion of religious orthodoxy and of financial
support by force of law and threat of penalty-) (emphasis
omitted); cf. Flast v. Cohen, 392 U. S. 83, 103-104
(1968) (holding that taxpayers have an adequate stake
in the outcome of Establishment Clause litigation to
satisfy Article III standing requirements, after stating
that -[o]ur history vividly illustrates that one of the
specific evils feared by those who drafted the Establish-
ment Clause and fought for its adoption was that the
taxing and spending power would be used to favor one
religion over another or to support religion in general-).
  The Court, accordingly, has never before upheld direct
state funding of the sort of proselytizing published in
Wide Awake and, in fact, has categorically condemned
state programs directly aiding religious activity, School
Dist. v. Ball, supra, at 395 (striking programs providing
secular instruction to nonpublic school students on
nonpublic school premises because they are -indistin-
guishable from the provision of a direct cash subsidy to
the religious school that is most clearly prohibited under
the Establishment Clause-); Wolman v. Walter, 433 U. S.
229, 254 (1977) (striking field trip aid program because
it constituted -an impermissible direct aid to sectarian
education-); Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U. S. 349, 365 (1975)
(striking material and equipment loan program to
nonpublic schools because of the inability to -channe[l]
aid to the secular without providing direct aid to the
sectarian-); Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist,
supra, at 774 (striking aid to nonpublic schools for
maintenance and repair of facilities because -[n]o
attempt is made to restrict payments to those expendi-
tures related to the upkeep of facilities used exclusively
for secular purposes-); Levitt v. Committee for Public Ed.
& Religious Liberty, 413 U. S. 472, 480 (1973) (striking
aid to nonpublic schools for state-mandated tests because
the state had failed to -assure that the state-supported
activity is not being used for religious indoctrination-);
Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 672, 683 (1971) (plural-
ity opinion) (striking as insufficient a 20-year limit on
prohibition for religious use in federal construction
program for university facilities because unrestricted use
even after 20 years -is in effect a contribution of some
value to a religious body-); id., at 689 (Douglas, Black,
and Marshall, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in
part).
  Even when the Court has upheld aid to an institution
performing both secular and sectarian functions, it has
always made a searching enquiry to ensure that the
institution kept the secular activities separate from its
sectarian ones, with any direct aid flowing only to the
former and never the latter.  Bowen v. Kendrick, 487
U. S. 589, 614-615 (1988) (upholding grant program for
services related to premarital adolescent sexual relations
on ground that funds cannot be -used by the grantees in
such a way as to advance religion-); Roemer v. Board of
Pub. Works of Md., 426 U. S. 736, 746-748, 755,
759-761 (1976) (plurality opinion) (upholding general aid
program restricting uses of funds to secular activities
only); Hunt v. McNair, 413 U. S. 734, 742-745 (1973)
(upholding general revenue bond program excluding from
participation facilities used for religious purposes); Tilton
v. Richardson, supra, at 679-682 (plurality opinion)
(upholding general aid program for construction of
academic facilities as -[t]here is no evidence that religion
seeps into the use of any of these facilities-); see Board
of Ed. of Central School Dist No. 1 v. Allen, 392 U. S.
236, 244-248 (1968) (upholding textbook loan program
limited to secular books requested by individual students
for secular educational purposes).
  Reasonable minds may differ over whether the Court
reached the correct result in each of these cases, but
their common principle has never been questioned or
repudiated.  -Although Establishment Clause jurispru-
dence is characterized by few absolutes, the Clause does
absolutely prohibit government-financed . . . indoctrina-
tion into the beliefs of a particular religious faith.- 
School Dist. v. Ball, 473 U. S., at 385.

                      B
  Why does the Court not apply this clear law to these
clear facts and conclude, as I do, that the funding
scheme here is a clear constitutional violation?  The
answer must be in part that the Court fails to confront
the evidence set out in the preceding section.  Through-
out its opinion, the Court refers uninformatively to Wide
Awake's -Christian viewpoint,- ante, at 4, or its -reli-
gious perspective,- ante, at 11, and in distinguishing
funding of Wide Awake from the funding of a church,
the Court maintains that -[Wide Awake] is not a
religious institution, at least in the usual sense,- ante,
at 24; see also ante, at 5.  The Court does not quote
the magazine's adoption of Saint Paul's exhortation to
awaken to the nearness of salvation, or any of its
articles enjoining readers to accept Jesus Christ, or the
religious verses, or the religious textual analyses, or the
suggested prayers.  And so it is easy for the Court to
lose sight of what the University students and the Court
of Appeals found so obvious, and to blanch the patently
and frankly evangelistic character of the magazine by
unrevealing allusions to religious points of view.
  Nevertheless, even without the encumbrance of detail
from Wide Awake's actual pages, the Court finds
something sufficiently religious about the magazine to
require examination under the Establishment Clause,
and one may therefore ask why the unequivocal prohibi-
tion on direct funding does not lead the Court to
conclude that funding would be unconstitutional.  The
answer is that the Court focuses on a subsidiary body of
law, which it correctly states but ultimately misapplies. 
That subsidiary body of law accounts for the Court's
substantial attention to the fact that the University's
funding scheme is -neutral,- in the formal sense that it
makes funds available on an evenhanded basis to
secular and sectarian applicants alike.  Ante, at 18-20. 
While this is indeed true and relevant under our cases,
it does not alone satisfy the requirements of the Estab-
lishment Clause, as the Court recognizes when it says
that evenhandedness is only a -significant factor- in
certain Establishment Clause analysis, not a dispositive
one.  Ante, at 18; see ante, at 19-20; see also ante, at
1-3 (O'Connor, J., concurring); id., at 2 (-Neutrality, in
both form and effect, is one hallmark of the Establish-
ment Clause-); Capitol Square Review and Advisory
Board v. Pinette, ___ U. S. ___, ___ (slip op., at 6)
(O'Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in the
judgment) (-the Establishment Clause forbids a State
from hiding behind the application of formally neutral
criteria and remaining studiously oblivious to the effects
of its actions. . . . [N]ot all State policies are permissible
under the Religion Clauses simply because they are
neutral in form-).  This recognition reflects the Court's
appreciation of two general rules: that whenever affirma-
tive government aid ultimately benefits religion, the
Establishment Clause requires some justification beyond
evenhandedness on the government's part; and that
direct public funding of core sectarian activities, even if
accomplished pursuant to an evenhanded program, would
be entirely inconsistent with the Establishment Clause
and would strike at the very heart of the Clause's
protection.  See ante, at 22 (-We do not confront a case
where, even under a neutral program that includes
nonsectarian recipients, the government is making direct
money payments to an institution or group that is
engaged in religious activity-); ante, at 19-20, 23-24; see
also ante, at 2 (O'Connor, J., concurring) (-[Our]
decisions . . . provide no precedent for the use of public
funds to finance religious activities-).
  In order to understand how the Court thus begins
with sound rules but ends with an unsound result, it is
necessary to explore those rules in greater detail than
the Court does.  As the foregoing quotations from the
Court's opinion indicate, the relationship between the
prohibition on direct aid and the requirement of
evenhandedness when affirmative government aid does
result in some benefit to religion reflects the relationship
between basic rule and marginal criterion.  At the heart
of the Establishment Clause stands the prohibition
against direct public funding, but that prohibition does
not answer the questions that occur at the margins of
the Clause's application.  Is any government activity
that provides any incidental benefit to religion likewise
unconstitutional?  Would it be wrong to put out fires in
burning churches, wrong to pay the bus fares of stu-
dents on the way to parochial schools, wrong to allow a
grantee of special education funds to spend them at a
religious college?  These are the questions that call for
drawing lines, and it is in drawing them that
evenhandedness becomes important.  However the Court
may in the past have phrased its line-drawing test, the
question whether such benefits are provided on an
evenhanded basis has been relevant, for the question
addresses one aspect of the issue whether a law is truly
neutral with respect to religion (that is, whether the law
either -advance[s] [or] inhibit[s] religion,- Allegheny
County v. Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, American Civil
Liberties Union, 492 U. S. 573, 592 (1989)).  In Widmar
v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263, 274 (1981), for example, we
noted that -[t]he provision of benefits to [a] broad . . .
spectrum of [religious and nonreligious] groups is an
important index of secular effect.-  See also Board of Ed.
of Kiryas Joel Village School Dist. v. Grumet, 512 U. S.
___, ___ (slip op., at 14-17) (1994).  In the doubtful
cases (those not involving direct public funding), where
there is initially room for argument about a law's effect,
evenhandedness serves to weed out those laws that
impermissibly advance religion by channelling aid to it
exclusively.  Evenhandedness is therefore a prerequisite
to further enquiry into the constitutionality of a doubtful
law, but evenhandedness goes no further.  It does not
guarantee success under Establishment Clause scrutiny.
  Three cases permitting indirect aid to religion, Mueller
v. Allen, 463 U. S. 388 (1983), Witters v. Washington
Dept. of Services for Blind, 474 U. S. 481 (1986), and
Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School Dist., 509 U. S. 1
(1993), are among the latest of those to illustrate this
relevance of evenhandedness when advancement is not
so obvious as to be patently unconstitutional.  Each case
involved a program in which benefits given to individu-
als on a religion-neutral basis ultimately were used by
the individuals, in one way or another, to support
religious institutions.  In each, the fact that aid was
distributed generally and on a neutral basis was a
necessary condition for upholding the program at issue. 
Witters, supra, at 487-488; Mueller, supra, at 397-399;
Zobrest, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 7-8).  But the
significance of evenhandedness stopped there.  We did
not, in any of these cases, hold that satisfying the
condition was sufficient, or dispositive.  Even more
importantly, we never held that evenhandedness might
be sufficient to render direct aid to religion constitu-
tional.  Quite the contrary.  Critical to our decisions in
these cases was the fact that the aid was indirect; it
reached religious institutions -only as a result of the
genuinely independent and private choices of aid
recipients,-  Witters, supra, at 487; see also Mueller,
supra, at 399-400; Zobrest, supra, at ___-___ (slip op., at
7-12).  In noting and relying on this particular feature
of each of the programs at issue, we in fact reaffirmed
the core prohibition on direct funding of religious
activities.  See Zobrest, supra, at ___-___ (slip op., at
9-12); Witters, supra, at 487; see also Mueller, supra, at
399-400.  Thus, our holdings in these cases were little
more than extensions of the unremarkable proposition
that -a State may issue a paycheck to one of its employ-
ees, who may then donate all or part of that paycheck
to a religious institution, all without constitutional
barrier . . . .-  Witters, supra, at 486-487.  Such
-attenuated financial benefit[s], ultimately controlled by
the private choices of individual[s],- we have found, are
simply not within the contemplation of the Establish-
ment Clause's broad prohibition.  Mueller, supra, at 400;
see also Witters, supra, at 493 (opinion of O'Connor, J.).
  Evenhandedness as one element of a permissibly
attenuated benefit is, of course, a far cry from
evenhandedness as a sufficient condition of constitution-
ality for direct financial support of religious
proselytization, and our cases have unsurprisingly
repudiated any such attempt to cut the Establishment
Clause down to a mere prohibition against unequal
direct aid.  See, e.g., Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U. S., at
682-684 (striking portion of general aid program
providing grants for construction of college and univer-
sity facilities to the extent program made possible the
use of funds for sectarian activities); Wolman v. Walter,
433 U. S., at 252-255 (striking funding of field trips for
nonpublic school students, such as are -provided to
public school students in the district,- because of
unacceptable danger that state funds would be used to
foster religion).  And nowhere has the Court's adherence
to the preeminence of the no-direct-funding principle
over the principle of evenhandedness been as clear as in
Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U. S. 589.
  Bowen involved consideration of the Adolescent Family
Life Act (AFLA), a federal grant program providing
funds to institutions for counseling and educational
services related to adolescent sexuality and pregnancy. 
At the time of the litigation, 141 grants had been
awarded under the AFLA to a broad array of both
secular and religiously affiliated institutions.  Id., at
597.  In an Establishment Clause challenge to the Act
brought by taxpayers and other interested parties, the
District Court resolved the case on a pre-trial motion for
summary judgment, holding the AFLA program unconsti-
tutional both on its face and also insofar as religious
institutions were involved in receiving grants under the
Act.  When this Court reversed on the issue of facial
constitutionality under the Establishment Clause, id., at
602-618, we said that there was -no intimation in the
statute that at some point, or for some grantees,
religious uses are permitted.-  Id., at 614.  On the
contrary, after looking at the legislative history and
applicable regulations, we found safeguards adequate to
ensure that grants would not be -used by . . . grantees
in such a way as to advance religion.-  Id., at 615.
  With respect to the claim that the program was
unconstitutional as applied, we remanded the case to the
District Court -for consideration of the evidence pre-
sented by appellees insofar as it sheds light on the
manner in which the statute is presently being adminis-
tered.-  Id., at 621.  Specifically, we told the District
Court, on remand, to -consider . . . whether in particular
cases AFLA aid has been used to fund `specifically
religious activit[ies] in an otherwise substantially secular
setting.'-  Ibid., quoting Hunt v. McNair, 413 U. S., at
743.  In giving additional guidance to the District Court,
we suggested that application of the Act would be
unconstitutional if it turned out that aid recipients were
using materials -that have an explicitly religious content
or are designed to inculcate the views of a particular
religious faith.-  Ibid.  At no point in our opinion did we
suggest that the breadth of potential recipients, or
distribution on an evenhanded basis, could have justified
the use of federal funds for religious activities, a
position that would have made no sense after we had
pegged the Act's facial constitutionality to our conclusion
that advancement of religion was not inevitable. 
Justice O'Connor's separate opinion in the case
underscored just this point: -I fully agree . . . that
`[p]ublic funds may not be used to endorse the religious
message.' Post, at 642 [(Blackmun, J., dissenting)]. . . . 
[A]ny use of public funds to promote religious doctrines
violates the Establishment Clause.-  Id., at 622-623
(concurring opinion) (emphasis in original).
  Bowen was no sport; its pedigree was the line of
Everson v. Board of Ed., 330 U. S., at 16-18, Board of
Ed. v. Allen, 392 U. S., at  243-249, Tilton v. Richard-
son, 403 U. S., at 678-682, Hunt v. McNair, 413 U. S.,
at 742-745, and Roemer v. Board of Pub. Works of Md.,
426 U. S., at 759-761.  Each of these cases involved a
general aid program that provided benefits to a broad
array of secular and sectarian institutions on an even-
handed basis, but in none of them was that fact disposi-
tive.  The plurality opinion in Roemer made this point
exactly:
-The Court has taken the view that a secular pur-
pose and a facial neutrality may not be enough, if
in fact the State is lending direct support to a
religious activity.  The State may not, for example,
pay for what is actually a religious education, even
though it purports to be paying for a secular one,
and even though it makes its aid available to
secular and religious institutions alike.-  426 U. S.,
at 747 (opinion of Blackmun, J.).
Instead, the central enquiry in each of these general aid
cases, as in Bowen, was whether secular activities could
be separated from the sectarian ones sufficiently to
ensure that aid would flow to the secular alone.
  Witters, Mueller, and Zobrest expressly preserve the
standard thus exhibited so often.  Each of these cases
explicitly distinguished the indirect aid in issue from
contrasting examples in the line of cases striking down
direct aid, and each thereby expressly preserved the core
constitutional principle that direct aid to religion is
impermissible.  See Zobrest, supra, at ___ (slip op., at
9-12) (distinguishing Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U. S. 349,
and School Dist. v. Ball, 473 U. S. 373, and noting that
-`[t]he state may not grant aid to a religious school,
whether cash or in kind, where the effect of the aid is
that of a direct subsidy to the religious school'-)
(quoting Witters, 474 U. S., at 487); see also ibid.;
Mueller, 463 U. S., at 399.  It appears that the Univer-
sity perfectly understood the primacy of the no-direct-
funding rule over the evenhandedness principle when it
drew the line short of funding -any activity which
primarily promotes or manifests a particular belief(s) in
or about a deity or an ultimate reality.-  App. to Pet.
for Cert. 66a.

                      C
  Since conformity with the marginal or limiting
principle of evenhandedness is insufficient of itself to
demonstrate the constitutionality of providing a govern-
ment benefit that reaches religion, the Court must
identify some further element in the funding scheme
that does demonstrate its permissibility.   For one
reason or another, the Court's chosen element appears
to be the fact that under the University's Guidelines,
funds are sent to the printer chosen by Wide Awake,
rather than to Wide Awake itself.  Ante, at 22-24.

                      1
  If the Court's suggestion is that this feature of the
funding program brings this case into line with Witters,
Mueller, and Zobrest (discussed supra, at 18-19), the
Court has misread those cases, which turned on the fact
that the choice to benefit religion was made by a non-
religious third party standing between the government
and a religious institution.  See Witters, 474 U. S., at
487; see also Mueller, 463 U. S., at 399-400; Zobrest,
509 U. S., at ___-___ (slip op., at 7-12).  Here there is
no third party standing between the government and the
ultimate religious beneficiary to break the circuit by its
independent discretion to put state money to religious
use.  The printer, of course, has no option to take the
money and use it to print a secular journal instead of
Wide Awake.  It only gets the money because of its
contract to print a message of religious evangelism at
the direction of Wide Awake, and it will receive payment
only for doing precisely that.  The formalism of distin-
guishing between payment to Wide Awake so it can pay
an approved bill and payment of the approved bill itself
cannot be the basis of a decision of Constitutional law. 
If this indeed were a critical distinction, the Constitution
would permit a State to pay all the bills of any religious
institution; in fact, despite the Court's purported
adherence to the no-direct-funding principle, the State
could simply hand out credit cards to religious institu-
tions and honor the monthly statements (so long as
someone could devise an evenhanded umbrella to cover
the whole scheme).  Witters and the other cases cannot
be distinguished out of existence this way.

                      2
  It is more probable, however, that the Court's refer-
ence to the printer goes to a different attempt to justify
the payment.  On this purported justification, the
payment to the printer is significant only as the last
step in an argument resting on the assumption that a
public university may give a religious group the use of
any of its equipment or facilities so long as secular
groups are likewise eligible.  The Court starts with the
cases of Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263 (1981), Board
of Ed. of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens, 496
U. S. 226 (1990), and Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches
Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. ___ (1993), in which
religious groups were held to be entitled to access for
speaking in government buildings open generally for that
purpose.  The Court reasons that the availability of a
forum has economic value (the government built and
maintained the building, while the speakers saved the
rent for a hall); and that economically there is no
difference between the University's provision of the value
of the room and the value, say, of the University's
printing equipment; and that therefore the University
must be able to provide the use of the latter.  Since it
may do that, the argument goes, it would be unduly
formalistic to draw the line at paying for an outside
printer, who simply does what the magazine's publishers
could have done with the University's own printing
equipment.  Ante, at 23-24.
  The argument is as unsound as it is simple, and the
first of its troubles emerges from an examination of the
cases relied upon to support it.  The common factual
thread running through Widmar, Mergens, and Lamb's
Chapel, is that a governmental institution created a
limited forum for the use of students in a school or
college, or for the public at large, but sought to exclude
speakers with religious messages.  See generally Perry
Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators' Assn., 460 U. S. 37,
45-46 (1983) (forum analysis).  In each case the restric-
tion was struck down either as an impermissible attempt
to regulate the content of speech in an open forum (as
in Widmar and Mergens) or to suppress a particular
religious viewpoint (as in Lamb's Chapel, see infra, at
37-38).  In each case, to be sure, the religious speaker's
use of the room passed muster as an incident of a plan
to facilitate speech generally for a secular purpose,
entailing neither secular entanglement with religion nor
risk that the religious speech would be taken to be the
speech of the government or that the government's
endorsement of a religious message would be inferred. 
But each case drew ultimately on unexceptionable
Speech Clause doctrine treating the evangelist, the
Salvation Army, the millennialist or the Hare Krishna
like any other speaker in a public forum.  It was the
preservation of free speech on the model of the street
corner that supplied the justification going beyond the
requirement of evenhandedness.
  The Court's claim of support from these forum-access
cases is ruled out by the very scope of their holdings. 
While they do indeed allow a limited benefit to religious
speakers, they rest on the recognition that all speakers
are entitled to use the street corner (even though the
State paves the roads and provides police protection to
everyone on the street) and on the analogy between the
public street corner and open classroom space.  Thus,
the Court found it significant that the classroom speak-
ers would engage in traditional speech activities in these
forums, too, even though the rooms (like street corners)
require some incidental state spending to maintain
them.  The analogy breaks down entirely, however, if
the cases are read more broadly than the Court wrote
them, to cover more than forums for literal speaking. 
There is no traditional street corner printing provided by
the government on equal terms to all comers, and the
forum cases cannot be lifted to a higher plane of
generalization without admitting that new economic
benefits are being extended directly to religion in clear
violation of the principle barring direct aid.  The
argument from economic equivalence thus breaks down
on recognizing that the direct state aid it would support
is not mitigated by the street corner analogy in the
service of free speech.  Absent that, the rule against
direct aid stands as a bar to printing services as well as
printers.

                      3
  It must, indeed, be a recognition of just this point that
leads the Court to take a third tack, not in coming up
with yet a third attempt at justification within the
rules of existing case law, but in recasting the scope
of the Establishment Clause in ways that make
further affirmative justification unnecessary.   Justice
O'Connor makes a comprehensive analysis of the
manner in which the activity fee is assessed and
distributed.  She concludes that the funding differs so
sharply from religious funding out of governmental
treasuries generally that it falls outside Establishment
Clause's purview in the absence of a message of reli-
gious endorsement (which she finds not to be present). 
Ante, at 4-8 (O'Connor, J., concurring).  The opinion of
the Court concludes more expansively that the activity
fee is not a tax, and then proceeds to find the aid
permissible on the legal assumption that the bar against
direct aid applies only to aid derived from tax revenue. 
I have already indicated why it is fanciful to treat the
fee as anything but a tax, supra, at 11-12, and n. 3; see
also ante, at 20 (noting mandatory nature of the fee),
and will not repeat the point again.  The novelty of the
assumption that the direct aid bar only extends to aid
derived from taxation, however, requires some response.
  Although it was a taxation scheme that moved
Madison to write in the first instance, the Court has
never held that government resources obtained without
taxation could be used for direct religious support, and
our cases on direct government aid have frequently
spoken in terms in no way limited to tax revenues. 
E.g., School Dist. v. Ball, 473 U. S., at 385 (-Although
Establishment Clause jurisprudence is characterized
by few absolutes, the Clause does absolutely prohibit
government-financed or government-sponsored indoc-
trination into the beliefs of a particular religious faith-);
Nyquist, 413 U. S., at 780 (-In the absence of an
effective means of guaranteeing that the state aid
derived from public funds will be used exclusively for
secular, neutral, and nonideological purposes, it is clear
from our cases that direct aid in whatever form is
invalid-); id., at 772 (-Primary among those evils-
against which the Establishment Clause guards -have
been sponsorship, financial support, and active involve-
ment of the sovereign in religious activity-) (citations
and internal quotation marks omitted); see also T.
Curry, The First Freedoms 217 (1986) (At the time of
the framing of the Bill of Rights, -[t]he belief that
government assistance to religion, especially in the form
of taxes, violated religious liberty had a long history-).
  Allowing non-tax funds to be spent on religion would,
in fact, fly in the face of clear principle.  Leaving
entirely aside the question whether public non-tax
revenues could ever be used to finance religion without
violating the endorsement test, see Allegheny County v.
American Civil Liberties Union, 492 U. S., at 593-594,
any such use of them would ignore one the dual objec-
tives of the Establishment Clause, which was meant not
only to protect individuals and their republics from the
destructive consequences of mixing government and
religion, but to protect religion from a corrupting
dependence on support from the Government.  Engel v.
Vitale, 370 U. S. 421, 431 (1962) (the Establishment
Clause's -first and most immediate purpose rested on
the belief that a union of government and religion tends
to destroy government and to degrade religion-); Everson,
330 U. S., at 53 (Rutledge, J., dissenting) (-The great
condition of religious liberty is that it be maintained
free from sustenance, as also from other interferences,
by the state.  For when it comes to rest upon that
secular foundation it vanishes with the resting-) (citing
Madison's Remonstrance --7, 8, reprinted in Everson,
supra, at 63-72 (appendix to dissent of Rutledge, J.));
School Dist. of Abington v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 259
(1963) (Brennan, J., concurring) (-It is not only the
nonbeliever who fears the injection of sectarian doctrines
and controversies into the civil polity, but in as high
degree it is the devout believer who fears the seculariza-
tion of a creed which becomes too deeply involved with
and dependent upon the government-) (footnote omitted);
Jefferson, A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom,
reprinted in 5 The Founder's Constitution, at 84-85. 
Since the corrupting effect of government support does
not turn on whether the Government's own money comes
from taxation or gift or the sale of public lands, the
Establishment Clause could hardly relax its vigilance
simply because tax revenue was not implicated.  Accord-
ingly, in the absence of a forthright disavowal, one can
only assume that the Court does not mean to eliminate
one half of the Establishment Clause's justification.

                      D
  Nothing in the Court's opinion would lead me to end
this enquiry into the application of the Establishment
Clause any differently from the way I began it.  The
Court is ordering an instrumentality of the State to
support religious evangelism with direct funding.  This
is a flat violation of the Establishment Clause.

                     II
  Given the dispositive effect of the Establishment
Clause's bar to funding the magazine, there should be
no need to decide whether in the absence of this bar the
University would violate the Free Speech Clause by
limiting funding as it has done.  Widmar, 454 U. S., at
271 (university's compliance with its Establishment
Clause obligations can be a compelling interest justifying
speech restriction).  But the Court's speech analysis may
have independent application, and its flaws should not
pass unremarked.
  The Court acknowledges, ante, at 11, the necessity for
a university to make judgments based on the content of
what may be said or taught when it decides, in the ab-
sence of unlimited amounts of money or other resources,
how to honor its educational responsibilities.  Widmar,
supra, at 276; cf. Perry, 460 U. S., at 49 (subject mat-
ter and speaker identity distinctions -are inherent
and inescapable in the process of limiting a non-
public forum to activities compatible with the in-
tended purpose of the property-).  Nor does the Court
generally question that in allocating public funds a state
university enjoys spacious discretion.  Cf. Rust v.
Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173, 194 (1991) (-[W]hen the govern-
ment appropriates public funds to establish a program
it is entitled to define the limits of that program-);
Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Wash., 461
U. S. 540 (1983) (upholding government subsidization
decision partial to one class of speaker).  Accordingly,
the Court recognizes that the relevant enquiry in this
case is not merely whether the University bases its
funding decisions on the subject matter of student
speech; if there is an infirmity in the basis for the
University's funding decision, it must be that the
University is impermissibly distinguishing among
competing viewpoints, ante, at 8-9, citing, inter alia,
Perry, supra, at 46; see also Lamb's Chapel, 508 U. S.
at, ___ (slip op., at 8-9) (subject matter distinctions
permissible in controlling access to limited public forum
if reasonable and viewpoint neutral); Cornelius v.
NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, Inc., 473 U. S. 788,
806 (1985) (similar); Regan, supra, at 548.
  The issue whether a distinction is based on viewpoint
does not turn simply on whether a government regula-
tion happens to be applied to a speaker who seeks to
advance a particular viewpoint; the issue, of course,
turns on whether the burden on speech is explained by
reference to viewpoint.  See Cornelius, supra, at 806
(-[T]he government violates the First Amendment when
it denies access to a speaker solely to suppress the point
of view he espouses on an otherwise includible subject-). 
As when deciding whether a speech restriction is
content-based or content-neutral, -[t]he government's
purpose is the controlling consideration.-  Ward v. Rock
Against Racism, 491 U. S. 781, 791 (1989); see also ibid.
(content neutrality turns on, inter alia, whether a speech
restriction is -justified without reference to the content
of the regulated speech-) (internal quotation marks and
citations omitted).  So, for example, a city that enforces
its excessive noise ordinance by pulling the plug on a
rock band using a forbidden amplification system is not
guilty of viewpoint discrimination simply because the
band wishes to use that equipment to espouse antiracist
views.  Accord, Rock Against Racism, supra.  Nor does
a municipality's decision to prohibit political advertising
on bus placards amount to viewpoint discrimination
when in the course of applying this policy it denies
space to a person who wishes to speak in favor of a
particular political candidate.  Accord, Lehman v. Shaker
Heights, 418 U. S. 298, 304 (1974) (plurality opinion).
  Accordingly, the prohibition on viewpoint discrimina-
tion serves that important purpose of the Free Speech
Clause, which is to bar the government from skewing
public debate.  Other things being equal, viewpoint
discrimination occurs when government allows one
message while prohibiting the messages of those who
can reasonably be expected to respond.  See First Nat.
Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 785-786 (1978)
(-Especially where . . . the legislature's suppression of
speech suggests an attempt to give one side of a debat-
able public question an advantage in expressing its
views to the people, the First Amendment is plainly
offended-) (footnote omitted); Madison Joint School Dist.
No. 8 v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm'n, 429
U. S. 167, 175-176 (1976) (-To permit one side of a
debatable public question to have a monopoly in express-
ing its views . . . is the antithesis of constitutional
guarantees-) (footnote omitted); United States v.
Kokinda, 497 U. S. 720, 736 (1990) (viewpoint discrimi-
nation involves an -inten[t] to discourage one viewpoint
and advance another-) (plurality opinion) (citations and
internal quotation marks omitted).  It is precisely this
element of taking sides in a public debate that identifies
viewpoint discrimination and makes it the most perni-
cious of all distinctions based on content.  Thus, if
government assists those espousing one point of view,
neutrality requires it to assist those espousing opposing
points of view, as well.
  There is no viewpoint discrimination in the Uni-
versity's application of its Guidelines to deny funding
to Wide Awake.  Under those Guidelines, a -religious
activit[y],- which is not eligible for funding, App. to Pet.
for Cert. 62a, is -an activity which primarily promotes
or manifests a particular belief(s) in or about a deity or
an ultimate reality,- App. to Pet. for Cert. 66a.  It is
clear that this is the basis on which Wide Awake
Productions was denied funding.  Letter from Student
Council to Ronald W. Rosenberger.  App. 54 (-In review-
ing the request by Wide Awake Productions, the Appro-
priations Committee determined your organization's
request could not be funded as it is a religious activity-). 
The discussion of Wide Awake's content, supra, at 3-6,
shows beyond any question that it -primarily promotes
or manifests a particular belief(s) in or about a deity
. . . ,- in the very specific sense that its manifest
function is to call students to repentance, to commitment
to Jesus Christ, and to particular moral action because
of its Christian character.
  If the Guidelines were written or applied so as to
limit only such Christian advocacy and no other evangel-
ical efforts that might compete with it, the discrimina-
tion would be based on viewpoint.  But that is not what
the regulation authorizes; it applies to Muslim and
Jewish and Buddhist advocacy as well as to Christian. 
And since it limits funding to activities promoting or
manifesting a particular belief not only -in- but -about-
a deity or ultimate reality, it applies to agnostics and
atheists as well as it does to deists and theists (as the
University maintained at oral argument, Tr. of Oral Arg.
18-19, and as the Court recognizes, see ante, at 15-16). 
The Guidelines, and their application to Wide Awake,
thus do not skew debate by funding one position but not
its competitors.  As understood by their application to
Wide Awake, they simply deny funding for hortatory
speech that -primarily promotes or manifests- any view
on the merits of religion; they deny funding for the
entire subject matter of religious apologetics.
  The Court, of course, reads the Guidelines differently,
but while I believe the Court is wrong in construing
their breadth, the important point is that even on the
Court's own construction the Guidelines impose no
viewpoint discrimination.  In attempting to demonstrate
the potentially chilling effect such funding restrictions
might have on learning in our nation's universities, the
Court describes the Guidelines as -a sweeping restriction
on student thought and student inquiry,- disentitling a
vast array of topics to funding.  Ante, at 15-16.  As the
Court reads the Guidelines to exclude -any writing that
is explicable as resting upon a premise which presup-
poses the existence of a deity or ultimate reality,- as
well as -those student journalistic efforts which primari-
ly manifest or promote a belief that there is no deity
and no ultimate reality,- the Court concludes that the
major works of writers from Descartes to Sartre would
be barred from the funding forum.  Ante, at 15-16.  The
Court goes so far as to suggest that the Guidelines,
properly interpreted, tolerate nothing much more than
essays on -making pasta or peanut butter cookies . . . .- 
Ante, at 16.
  Now, the regulation is not so categorically broad as
the Court protests.  The Court reads the word -primari-
ly- (-primarily promotes or manifests a particular
belief(s) in or about a deity or an ultimate reality-) right
out of the Guidelines, whereas it is obviously crucial in
distinguishing between works characterized by the
evangelism of Wide Awake and writing that merely
happens to express views that a given religion might
approve, or simply descriptive writing informing a reader
about the position of a given religion.  But, as I said,
that is not the important point.  Even if the Court were
indeed correct about the funding restriction's categorical
breadth, the stringency of the restriction would most
certainly not work any impermissible viewpoint discrimi-
nation under any prior understanding of that species of
content discrimination.  If a University wished to fund
no speech beyond the subjects of pasta and cookie
preparation, it surely would not be discriminating on the
basis of someone's viewpoint, at least absent some
controversial claim that pasta and cookies did not exist. 
The upshot would be an instructional universe without
higher education, but not a universe where one view-
point was enriched above its competitors.
  The Guidelines are thus substantially different from
the access restriction considered in Lamb's Chapel, the
case upon which the Court heavily relies in finding a
viewpoint distinction here, ante, at 9-11.  Lamb's Chapel
addressed a school board's regulation prohibiting the
after-hours use of school premises -by any group for
religious purposes,- even though the forum otherwise
was open for a variety of social, civic, and recreational
purposes.  508 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2) (citation and
internal quotation marks omitted).  -Religious- was
understood to refer to the viewpoint of a believer, and
the regulation did not purport to deny access to any
speaker wishing to express a non-religious or expressly
antireligious point of view on any subject, see ibid. (-The
issue in this case is whether . . . it violates the Free
Speech Clause of the First Amendment . . . to deny a
church access to school premises to exhibit for public
viewing and for assertedly religious purposes, a film
dealing with family and child-rearing issues-); id., at ___
(slip op., at 8-9), citing May v. Evansville-Vanderburgh
School Corp., 787 F. 2d 1105, 1114 (CA7 1986).
  With this understanding, it was unremarkable that in
Lamb's Chapel we unanimously determined that the
access restriction, as applied to a speaker wishing to
discuss family values from a Christian perspective,
impermissibly distinguished between speakers on the
basis of viewpoint.  See Lamb's Chapel, supra, at ___
(slip op., at 8-9) (considering as-applied challenge only). 
Equally obvious is the distinction between that case and
this one, where the regulation is being applied, not to
deny funding for those who discuss issues in general
from a religious viewpoint, but to those engaged in
promoting or opposing religious conversion and religious
observances as such.  If this amounts to viewpoint
discrimination, the Court has all but eviscerated the line
between viewpoint and content.
  To put the point another way, the Court's decision
equating a categorical exclusion of both sides of the
religious debate with viewpoint discrimination suggests
the Court has concluded that primarily religious and
antireligious speech, grouped together, always provides
an opposing (and not merely a related) viewpoint to any
speech about any secular topic.  Thus, the Court's
reasoning requires a university that funds private
publications about any primarily nonreligious topic also
to fund publications primarily espousing adherence to or
rejection of religion.  But a university's decision to fund
a magazine about racism, and not to fund publications
aimed at urging repentance before God does not skew
the debate either about racism or the desirability of
religious conversion.  The Court's contrary holding
amounts to a significant reformulation of our viewpoint
discrimination precedents and will significantly expand
access to limited-access forums.  See Greer v. Spock, 424
U. S. 828 (1976) (upholding regulation prohibiting
political speeches on military base); Cornelius, 473 U. S.,
at 812 (exclusion from fundraising drive of political
activity or advocacy groups is facially viewpoint neutral
despite inclusion of charitable, health and welfare
agencies); Perry, 460 U. S., at 49-50, and n. 9 (ability of
teachers' bargaining representative to use internal school
mail system does not require that access be provided to
-any other citizen's group or community organization
with a  message for school personnel-); Lehman, 418
U. S., at 304 (exclusion of political messages from forum
permissible despite ability of nonpolitical speakers to use
the forum) (plurality opinion).

                     III
  Since I cannot see the future I cannot tell whether
today's decision portends much more than making a
shambles out of student activity fees in public colleges. 
Still, my apprehension is whetted by Chief Justice
Burger's warning in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602,
624 (1971): -in constitutional adjudication some steps,
which when taken were thought to approach `the verge,'
have become the platform for yet further steps.  A
certain momentum develops in constitutional theory and
it can be a `downhill thrust' easily set in motion but
difficult to retard or stop.-
  I respectfully dissent.