“The Supreme Court is poised to make taxpayers fund anti LGBTQ discrimination,” said Ian Millhiser in Vox. The justices recently heard arguments in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a case that “squarely presents the question of whether the Constitution authorizes discrimination by religious schools.” Colorado has offered universal preschool for 4-year-olds since 2023, allowing families to choose from a wide range of public and private providers, including religious institutions. But schools that participate in the program must be open to all children—including those with gay and transgender parents. The St. Mary Catholic Parish preschool outside Denver argues that this requirement conflicts with its Catholic mission and violates its First Amendment rights. The court’s conservative majority seems to agree, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying Colorado’s law looked “pretty much the same” as a Maine law the court struck down in 2022 that excluded religious schools from a public tuition assistance program. Given the conservative majority’s track record of siding with religious plaintiffs, St. Mary will almost certainly end in “victory for religious groups that wish to exclude sexual or gender minorities.”
It should, because Colorado’s preschool program is a “blatant attack on religious liberty,” said Tim Busch in National Review. The state gladly funds “preschools that enforce and evangelize the most aggressive” LGBTQ ethic, yet it balked at a “school’s requirement that families uphold Catholic teaching, including the sanctity of marriage and the reality of biological sex.” Such unequal treatment is “inconsistent with the First Amendment.” By denying Catholic preschools funding, the state is saying “religious views are inferior”—and that Catholics are “second-class citizens the moment they try to live out their faith.”
“Those religious beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum,” said Adam Laats in Slate. In this case, religious freedom is interpreted to mean the freedom to exclude LGBTQ families “from a publicly funded educational program.” And the Catholic institutions want all Coloradans, including those excluded families, to “subsidize their discriminatory religious beliefs.” The court is unlikely to rule for Colorado, said Aaron Tang in the Los Angeles Times, but the conservative justices should “pause before handing a victory to the religious schools.” If the court sides with the plaintiffs, Colorado has a “glaringly obvious policy response”: follow California’s example and fund universal pre-K through public schools. That would eliminate a program that directs over $9.5 million a year to faith-based preschools and is “quite popular” with conservatives. The Left and Right may both “loathe this next ruling.”
Colorado’s universal preschool program faces a religious freedom challenge
