The Supreme Court this week took one small step for religious freedom. Unfortunately, it failed to take the giant leap needed to fully protect religious practice.

In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the court considered the plight of the Catholic church, which has served Philadelphia’s needy children in various ways since the late 1700s. For more than a century, Catholic Social Services has contracted with the city to connect children in need of a home with loving foster parents. In 2018, the city suddenly terminated Catholic Social Services’s contract because it discovered that the agency, in following Catholic church teaching on marriage, would not place children with same-sex couples.