Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1195_g314.pdf
Page Number: 66.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

5 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

pursue degrees that were “ ‘devotional in nature or designed 
to induce religious belief.’ ”  540 U. S., at 716; see id., at 719, 
n. 2 (quoting Wash. Const., Art. II, §11).  Again, the Court 
assumed  that  the  Establishment  Clause  permitted  the 
State to support students seeking such degrees.  540 U. S., 
at  719.  But  the  Court  concluded  that  the  Free  Exercise 
Clause did not require it to do so. 

The Court observed that the State’s decision not to fund 
devotional degrees did not penalize religious exercise or re-
quire anyone to choose between their faith and a “govern-
ment benefit.”  Id., at 721.  Rather, the State had “merely 
chosen not to fund a distinct category of instruction” that
was  “essentially  religious.”  Ibid.  Although  Washington’s
Constitution drew “a more stringent line than that drawn
by  the  United  States  Constitution,”  the  Court  found  that
the State’s position was consistent with the widely shared
view, dating to the founding of the Republic, that taxpayer-
supported religious indoctrination poses a threat to individ-
ual liberty.  Id., at 722.  Given this “historic and substantial 
state interest,” the Court concluded, it would be inappropri-
ate to subject Washington’s law to a “presumption of uncon-
stitutionality.”  Id., at 725.  And, without such a presump-
tion,  the  claim  that  the  exclusion  of  devotional  studies 
violated the Free Exercise Clause “must fail,” for “[i]f any 
room exists between the two Religion Clauses, it must be
here.”  Ibid.; see id., at 721, n. 3. 

C 
The majority finds that the school-playground case, Trin-
ity Lutheran, and not the religious-studies case, Locke, con-
trols  here.  I  disagree.  In  my  view,  the  program  at  issue 
here is strikingly similar to the program we upheld in Locke 
and importantly different from the program we found un-
constitutional in Trinity Lutheran.  Like the State of Wash-
ington in Locke, Montana has chosen not to fund (at a dis-
tance)  “an  essentially  religious  endeavor”—an  education