Colorado politicians promised the state’s families universal pre-K programs — but snatched the promise back from Catholic parents who want to choose a school that supports their religious beliefs.
Parents fought them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Tuesday the justices heard oral arguments in St. Mary Catholic Parish vs. Roy, a case that pits Colorado’s Democrat-controlled state government against the Archdiocese of Denver and parents who were denied public tuition assistance for their preschoolers.
It turned into a verbal fistfight as the court’s three left-leaning justices sought to halt a recent string of victories for religious freedom.
Count on the conservative majority to rule for archdiocese — and to bring financial relief and fairness to families of faith all across the U.S.
Colorado’s “universal” pre-K funds seats in public, private and religious schools for all kids — except those attending the Denver archdiocese’s schools.
Those schools require pre-K parents to pledge in writing that they’ll support church teachings on marriage, sex and gender.
The archdiocesan handbook declares that its schools will make no accommodations involving bathrooms, pronouns or school uniforms for transgender children.
Colorado’s left-leaning lawmakers consider these matters of Catholic doctrine to be bigoted — so they want archdiocesan schools to accept children whose parents reject the church’s teachings. Crazy.
And outrageous: Colorado Democrats, along with their blue-state allies and the mainstream media, are accusing the Catholic schools of discrimination for following their faith.
Yet according to the trial record, there hasn’t been a single instance of an LGBTQ family being turned away from a Catholic pre-K — because none has ever applied.
They’ve freely chosen to attend other programs.
Colorado admits its whole discrimination-based case is “speculative,” but it’s withholding funds from archdiocesan schools even so.
Who’s really being victimized here?
Not gay families; their children can attend pre-K on the public’s tab.
It’s the Catholic families, who must reach into their own wallets — up to $6,300 a year — to pay for the schooling that others get for free.
Dan and Lisa Sheley, who joined the lawsuit, have already lost $18,000 in tuition assistance. “We’re being discriminated against,” they say.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor came out swinging in Tuesday’s oral argument, condemning the archdiocese for wanting “to discriminate by exclusion” — even suggesting its policy is tantamount to one barring all Black children.
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson sought to reduce the church’s policy to a blanket ban on gay families rather than a requirement that parents formally accept Catholic teachings.
The other six justices, however, didn’t seem to be convinced.
Colorado told the justices that its refusal to fund Catholic pre-K programs “reflects the value judgements and policy determinations of democratically elected and accountable state legislatures.”
That’s exactly the problem.
The Bill of Rights was written to protect individuals from this kind of majoritarian tyranny.
Catholic parents should receive the same help other parents get, regardless of what left-leaning politicians may think of Catholic theology.
Twenty-three red states are supporting the Catholic parents, deeming them victims of “majoritarian hostility towards disfavored religious minorities.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested Tuesday that Colorado lawmakers picked the fight, saying they “had to see this coming.”
For nearly a decade, the Supreme Court has chopped away at the once inviolable wall between church and state, building instead new protections for people of faith to access public funding.
In 2017, the court ruled that Missouri had unconstitutionally held funds back from a faith-based preschool when all other private schools received assistance to make playground improvements.
In 2022, the court held in Carson v. Makin that Maine violated the First Amendment when it excluded religious schools from a rural scholarship program that funded secular private schools.
In that case, the justices ruled expressly that Maine cannot compel religious schools to remove religious symbols, exclude sacred teachings or scrub their programs of spirituality in order to qualify for public funding.
Albany, listen up: New York is currently violating that ruling.
The state’s Office of Early Learning requires religious pre-Ks receiving public funding to jump through a series of unconstitutional hoops, forcing them to eliminate religious instruction and prayer, take down religious symbols, and even use a separate door for secular programming.
These rules aren’t always enforced, but they are on the books, intimidating families of faith and crippling educators.
Expect the high court to rule for Colorado’s Catholics in the coming months.
But even before the ruling is handed down, New York families of faith who want their children to attend a religious pre-K — be it Catholic, Jewish or Muslim — should unite and take action against unconstitutional rules that have only one aim: to smother and extinguish religion.
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