Based on old First Amendment court cases, federal law had told religious groups blessing the food could cost them their grants — unless such “explicitly religious activities” (like prayer) were offered “separately, in time or location,” from the taxpayer-funded service. Only religious charities had this headache; secular groups could promote their nonreligious views without consulting the Code of Federal Regulations.

That is why President Donald Trump‘s Department of Health and Human Services, under the leadership of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asked us in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel if the Constitution really required religious groups to jump through hoops secular charities did not. Our answer, recently published, is an emphatic “no.”