Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf
Page Number: 31

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

9 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

program for students attending private schools.”  591 U. S., 
at ___ (slip op., at 1).  But the State prohibited families from 
using the scholarship at any private school “ ‘owned or con-
trolled in whole or in part by any church, religious sect, or 
denomination.’ ”    Id.,  at  ___  (slip  op.,  at  3)  (quoting  Mont. 
Admin.  Rule  §42.4.802(1)(a)  (2015)).    As  in  Trinity  Lu-
theran, Montana denied funds to schools based “expressly 
on religious status and not religious use”; “[t]o be eligible” 
for  scholarship  funds,  a  school  had  to  “divorce  itself  from
any  religious  control  or  affiliation.”  591  U. S.  at  ___–___ 
(slip  op.,  at  10–11).  Here,  again,  Maine  denies  tuition 
money to schools not because of their religious affiliation, 
but because they will use state funds to promote religious
views. 

These distinctions are important.  The very point of the
Establishment  Clause  is  to  prevent  the  government  from
sponsoring religious activity itself, thereby favoring one re-
ligion  over  another  or  favoring  religion  over  nonreligion.
See  Engel,  370  U. S.,  at  430  (“Under  [the  Establishment 
Clause] . . . government in this country, be it state or fed-
eral, is without power to prescribe by law . . . any program 
of governmentally sponsored religious activity”); Walz, 397 
U. S., at 668 (“[F]or the men who wrote the Religion Clauses 
. . . the ‘establishment’ of a religion connoted . . . [any] ac-
tive  involvement  of  the  sovereign  in  religious  activity”); 
Everson, 330 U. S., at 15 (States may not “pass laws which 
aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over 
another”).  State funding of religious activity risks the very
social conflict based upon religion that the Religion Clauses
were designed to prevent.  And, unlike the circumstances 
present in Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza, it is religious ac-
tivity, not religious labels, that lies at the heart of this case. 

III 
A 
I turn now to consider the Maine program at issue here.