In the words of the late Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in the case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, which struck down a Rhode Island law that gave government support to religious schools, is akin to “some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, . . . frightening the little children and school attorneys.” But the court appears to have overturned the ruling completely in its recent decision in favor of Joseph Kennedy, a high-school football coach who was prohibited from praying silently before football games. Howard Slugh explains:

The Supreme Court found that the school violated the coach’s right to exercise his religion freely. The court explained that “respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head.” The school’s attempt to “punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance” was unconstitutional.

This holding is of the utmost importance to religious minorities such as Jews and Muslims who are frequently called upon [by their beliefs] to engage in public acts of religious expression. Attempts by those in the media to paint this decision as somehow harmful to religious minorities are misguided at best and deliberately misleading at worst. Today, no Jewish public-school teacher has to fear that his public school might fire him for saying a blessing before he takes a drink of water. No Jewish or Muslim public-school teachers have to fear that they will be fired for wearing religious garb.

In Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Supreme Court [had] created a highly subjective test that “called for an examination of a law’s purposes, effects, and potential for entanglement with religion” in order to determine whether it created an unconstitutional “establishment” of religion. If you find that difficult to understand, you are not alone. No one has ever been able to figure out what the court actually meant.

One thing that is clear is that Lemon was bad for religious Americans. Before Lemon, the Supreme Court had never once found that a person’s public display of religion violated the constitution. As Justice Gorsuch noted, “after Lemon, cases challenging public displays under the [First Amendment’s] Establishment Clause came fast and furious.”

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.