Just before Thanksgiving, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of Agudath Israel—the nation’s leading ḥaredi organization—and the Catholic diocese of Brooklyn, which claimed that New York State’s restrictions on houses of worship located in neighborhoods deemed coronavirus “hotspots” constituted an undue burden on the free exercise of religion. Examining the decision, Michael A. Helfand writes:

The court was careful to strike down only the most severe elements of New York’s restrictions, and its logic demanded this sort of distinction. It was because New York could still impose capacity restrictions on houses of worship—tying attendance limitations to the size of the church or synagogue—that the state’s insistence on also imposing attendance maximums was unconstitutional. Put differently, New York’s limits violated the First Amendment, in part, because there were less restrictive alternatives that could also effectively meet the demands of public health.

But such alternatives, such as capacity restrictions based on the size of the house of worship, are only effective if the relevant faith communities adhere to them. In this way, the court’s decision reflects a bargain of sorts. If religious communities remain committed to the demands of public health—if they adhere to the remaining capacity and other attendant COVID guidelines—then courts have the leeway to strike down the most onerous of restrictions on religious worship. But if religious communities choose to pocket this win and flout the remaining rules, it will raise serious questions with the court’s analysis.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court told New York that extreme regulation of religion was unconstitutional—and it told religious communities that it will rely on less restrictive regulations if compliance ensures the effectiveness of those regulations. Let’s hope that both sides can live up to their ends of the bargain.

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.