The Supreme Court’s most recent term has produced a series of important rulings protecting religious freedom, most recently in the case of Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru. Howard Slugh explains:

In Morrissey-Berru, the Court reaffirmed that the First Amendment ensures that religious institutions may decide “free from state interference, matters of church government as well as . . . doctrine.” As the majority opinion noted, this concerned the Founders because, prior to the American Revolution, Britain used its authority to dictate who could serve as religious functionaries in the colonies. For example, in 1771, the British ordered New York to only accept schoolmasters licensed by the bishop of London.

The Supreme Court [thus] determined that, in order to avoid that sort of abuse, the First Amendment prohibited the government from interfering in religious organizations’ decisions regarding their hiring and firing of religious officials. . . . Critics [of the ruling] may concede that, while avoiding such meddling was important in the 1700s and 1800s, it is no longer necessary today. They would claim that the government no longer seeks to control religious doctrine, and therefore the Court can allow some level of government intrusion into internal religious affairs.

The critics are incorrect for two main reasons. First, that is simply not how law works. Even if the concerns that motivated the First Amendment passed, the Court cannot unilaterally weaken the First Amendment’s protections. Only Congress and the American people, acting through the proper procedures, can amend the Constitution. Second, the critics are also wrong about the facts; government entities in the United States still threaten to impose their religious orthodoxy on dissenting groups. The protections of the First Amendment remain as necessary now as they ever were in the past.

In . . . 2014, the city of Houston issued a subpoena demanding religious leaders’ sermons relating to “homosexuality” or “gender identity.” The city eventually relented, and the subpoenas’ purpose is disputed, but their breadth and intrusiveness remain chilling. Over the last century, the government has expanded to the point where it now touches nearly every area in American life. As the reach of the state has grown, so has its capacity to impose its views on religious dissenters.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.