Constitutional protections both prohibit the government from discriminating against individuals on the basis of their religion, and from interfering in their religious practices. In a recent case, these two prohibitions conflict, as Jonathan Tobin explains:

When Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram attempted to adopt a child, they ran into an unexpected roadblock. The boy they wished to bring into their family was in Florida. That meant the couple, who are Jewish and live in Knoxville, Tennessee, had to first take a state-approved family training course. As the Washington Post reported, according to a lawsuit they filed in court [in January], it meant they had to come into contact with the Holston United Methodist Home for Children because it was the only available agency certified by the state that could give them the training required by law. But after initially thinking that the home would work with them, they were told that the Methodist group’s core religious principles forbid them from placing children in non-Christian homes.

It’s easy to sympathize with their plight, and the case cries out for a solution that would have enabled them to adopt without having to have had this experience. But if they win their case, it won’t be a triumph for the rights of American Jews. On the contrary, it would be a blow to the entire idea of religious freedom that is the foundation for Jewish rights in this country.

The goal of the lawsuit is to overturn state legislation signed into law in January 2020 that explicitly permits religious adoption agencies to decline to be involved in cases that “would violate the agency’s written religious or moral convictions or policies.

The state should have provided other options for compliance with adoption rules other than those that require working with a religious agency only helping individuals who practice its particular faith. A reasonable solution to this family’s problem would be for Tennessee to provide such an option, whether ecumenical or secular in nature, that would allow them to legally adopt a child from out of state. Yet it is quite another thing to claim—as the couple’s lawsuit does—that Tennessee has a positive obligation to force a religious agency to discard its beliefs or that a law that seeks to protect the right of that agency to religious freedom is unconstitutional because people of another faith wish to avail themselves of its services.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”