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.”

Between the explosion of thousands of Hizballah pagers on September 17 and now, Iran’s geopolitical clout has shrunk dramatically: Hizballah, Iran’s most important striking force, has retreated to lick its wounds; Iranian influence in Syria has collapsed; Iran’s attempts to attack Israel via Gaza have proved self-defeating; its missile and drone arsenal have proved impotent; and its territorial defenses have proved useless in the face of Israeli airpower. Edward Luttwak considers what might happen next:

The myth of Iranian power was ironically propagated by the United States itself. Right at the start of his first term, in January 2009, Barack Obama was terrified that he would be maneuvered into fighting a war against Iran. . . . Obama started his tenure by apologizing for America’s erstwhile support for the shah. And beyond showing contrition for the past, the then-president also set a new rule, one that lasted all the way to October 2024: Iran may attack anyone, but none may attack Iran.

[Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s] variegated fighters, in light trucks and jeeps, could have been stopped by a few hundred well-trained soldiers. But neither Hizballah nor Iran’s own Revolutionary Guards could react. Hizballah no longer has any large units capable of crossing the border to fight rebels in Syria, as they had done so many times before. As for the Revolutionary Guards, they were commandeering civilian airliners to fly troops into Damascus airport to support Assad. But then Israel made clear that it would not allow Iran’s troops so close to its border, and Iran no longer had credible counter-threats.

Now Iran’s population is discovering that it has spent decades in poverty to pay for the massive build-up of the Revolutionary Guards and all their militias. And for what? They have elaborate bases and showy headquarters, but their expensive ballistic missiles can only be used against defenseless Arabs, not Israel with its Arrow interceptors. As for Hizballah, clearly it cannot even defend itself, let alone Iran’s remaining allies in the region. Perhaps, in short, the dictatorship will finally be challenged in the streets of Iran’s cities, at scale and in earnest.