Among the triumphs of originalist interpretation and common sense that characterized so many of the decisions of the 2021 session of the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the quietest and most important was the one affirming that religious organizations are allowed to be religious.

That decision, in Carson v. Makin, focused particularly on the right of religious private schools to enjoy equal access to government funding. It also took a major step toward reconciling some long-standing legal confusion on how the two religious freedom clauses of the First Amendment relate to one another.