The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs cannot stop a pastor from invoking the name of “Jesus Christ” in his Memorial Day prayer at Houston National Cemetery, a federal judge said Thursday.

Scott Rainey, lead pastor at the Living Word Church of the Nazarene, on Thursday filed a lawsuit requesting a temporary restraining order against the VA and its director of the Houston National Cemetery from censoring his prayer reference to Jesus.

The suit argued that the government is unconstitutionally censoring his speech and engaging in religious viewpoint discrimination.

The judge hearing the case agreed with Rainey, granting his motion for the court to intercede.

“The government cannot gag citizens when it says it is in the interest of national security, and it cannot do it in some bureaucrat’s notion of cultural homogeneity,” U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes wrote in his three-page order. “The right to free expression ranges from the dignity of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches to Charlie Sheen’s rants.”

This coming Monday, Rainey will be able to recite his prayer in full during a Memorial Day service at the cemetery to honor fallen U.S. soldiers. This is the third year that the pastor has been asked by the National Cemetery Council for Greater Houston to give the invocation at the event.

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