church as a church discriminated against it due to its religious status. The Chief Justice stopped short of a more blanket ruling, adding a footnote to clarify that the case "involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing" and that the Court was not addressing "religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination." Justices Thomas and Gorsuch did not join this footnote in the opinion. The Court noted that upheld the state of Washington's decision not to fund students seeking degrees in devotional theology as part of a state scholarship program, but said the state did not want to force students to give up their religious views; for instance, the scholarships could be used at religious schools. Missouri could not rely on Locke here, the Court explained, because devotional theology is an essentially religious endeavor while playground resurfacing is not. While the state may discriminate against funding activities for being religious, it cannot discriminate against persons simply for being religious. Finally, the Court found that the discrimination against the church failed strict scrutiny because Missouri did not have a compelling government interest in enforcing a stricter separation of church and state than that found already in the U.S. Constitution. Thomas's concurrence Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, concurred in part with the opinion of the Court. He joined nearly all of the opinion, but did not join footnote 3. He took issue with the Court's endorsement in Locke of even a "mild kind" of discrimination against religion, but since the Court "appropriately construes Locke narrowly," he was able to join nearly all of the opinion. Gorsuch's concurrence Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, concurred in part. He offered two qualifications: first, that "the Court leaves open the possibility a useful distinction might be drawn between laws that discriminate on the basis of religious status and religious use," and second, that footnote 3 may lead some to read that the Court's ruling applies only in cases involving a playground "or only those with some association with children’s safety or health, or perhaps some other social good we find sufficiently worthy." Breyer's concurrence in judgment Justice Stephen Breyer concurred only in the judgment. Citing the Court's ruling in , where Justice Hugo Black wrote that depriving parochial schools from "general government services as ordinary police and fire protection...is obviously not the purpose of