A Memorial Day Victory for Religious Freedom

​The just-completed Memorial Day celebration, for Virginians at least, highlighted two of our most sacred American traditions: honoring our fallen soldiers and celebrating our religious freedom.
 
In an unequivocal victory for the First Amendment, the National Park Service backtracked and allowed the Knights of Columbus to conduct their annual Memorial Day Mass at the Poplar Grove National Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia. The change in course followed NPS’s denial of a permit for the Catholic fraternal organization (for the second year in a row), a decision which it based on a 2022 policy memorandum restricting the types of events that may be held within national cemeteries.
 
The Knights of Columbus have celebrated a Memorial Day Mass at Poplar Grove since the 1960s. After learning that their permit request was again denied, the group filed for an injunction in coordination with the First Liberty Institute and the McGuireWoods law firm. In their brief, the Knights explain that NPS decided to interpret their religious service as a “demonstration,” and thus impermissible under current regulations.
 
They write: “By prohibiting the Knights from exercising their religious convictions and expressing their patriotism by praying for and honoring the fallen through a Catholic mass held inside the cemetery, NPS is misapplying its own regulations, unlawfully infringing on the Knights’ First Amendment rights and violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).” 
 
That this blatant constitutional disregard occurred in Virginia – arguably the birthplace of America’s tradition of religious freedom (see Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, passed in 1786) – makes it all the more surprising.
 
Some credit might be afforded to the Biden Administration for reversing course here (though the denial never should have happened in the first place). More importantly, our gratitude goes out to the Knights of Columbus for standing up for the First Amendment – and proving in the process that we don’t have to accept a shrinking space for religious liberty.
 
These are, after all, freedoms that Americans have fought for and died to protect.