Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of Colorado’s bid to lock Catholic preschools out of universal pre-K funding unless they drop religious admissions standards tied to Church teaching.
The high court heard oral arguments Tuesday in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a Free Exercise challenge to the Centennial State’s universal preschool rules. The Washington Examiner reported that the justices looked unconvinced by Colorado’s defense of its decision to bar Catholic schools that will not admit every family.
At stake is a simple demand. Colorado says Catholic preschools must accept all families, including those who do not share Catholic beliefs, to take part in the state program. A coalition of Catholic schools says that order would force them to sacrifice their faith and violates the First Amendment.
The case lands at the center of a larger fight over whether states can condition public education dollars on religious schools abandoning core teachings. For older readers who value constitutional order and equal treatment under the law, the dispute is plain: can a state punish Catholic institutions for living by their creed?
Colorado’s universal preschool program grew out of a 2020 ballot measure. Voters backed it 68 percent to 32 percent. Tobacco taxes fund tuition so every four-year-old can attend 15 hours of preschool each week, Breitbart noted in its coverage of the dispute.
Two Catholic preschools were excluded after they refused to enroll children from LGBTQ+ families on religious grounds. The schools sued, arguing the sexual-orientation and gender-identity nondiscrimination rule violates the Free Exercise Clause. Lower courts sided with Colorado. A federal district court and the Tenth Circuit treated the rule as a neutral, generally applicable law under the Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith, the ruling that often lets governments enforce evenhanded rules even when they burden religious practice.
The Catholic schools urge the justices to revisit or overrule Smith. They say Colorado is not running a neutral program. It is using public money to pressure religious schools into rewriting admissions policies that flow from long-standing Church teaching on marriage and family.
That pressure is the heart of the case. The state framed its rule as simple fairness: take every child or stay out. The schools answered that “every child” in this context means families whose living arrangements and beliefs directly conflict with Catholic doctrine. Forcing the choice is not neutrality. It is a penalty on faith.
Other recent high-court matters have likewise tested how far government may go when constitutional claims collide with state policy, including when the Justice Department took a California ballot fight to the Supreme Court after lower courts refused relief.
Just the News reported the core claim in clear terms when the Court first took the case.
"The Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear a high-profile religious liberty dispute, taking up a challenge from two Colorado Catholic preschools that say the state’s universal preschool program unconstitutionally excludes them for refusing to enroll children from LGBTQ+ families in violation of their faith."
That framing matches what the schools told the justices Tuesday. Colorado barred them from the program because they would not meet admit-any-child standards. The coalition of Catholic schools replied that asking them to admit families who do not follow Catholic teachings would sacrifice their beliefs. They call that a First Amendment violation.
No one disputes the schools are religious. No one claims they hide their standards. The fight is whether the state may freeze them out of a broadly available education benefit for refusing to treat those standards as optional.
National readers should see the mechanism without the legal jargon. A state creates a big funding pool for preschool. Religious schools may join only if they rewrite admissions rules that define their mission. Refuse, and your families lose the tuition help their neighbors receive. That is not a small administrative detail. It is leverage.
Similar questions about executive and judicial power have surfaced in other arenas, as when the Trump administration moved to close a Chinese birth-tourism path after a Supreme Court setback.
The Trump administration filed a brief supporting the Catholic preschools. It called the lower-court rulings “deeply problematic.” That backing places the executive branch on the side of Free Exercise against a state rule that treats religious admissions policy as disqualifying.
Colorado defended the exclusion as the price of entry. Accept every family, including those who reject Catholic teaching, or stay outside the program. The schools say that condition is the constitutional problem. A government benefit that requires a church school to stop being a church school is not an evenhanded offer.
The Smith precedent sits in the background. For three decades it has given states wide room to enforce neutral laws. Religious claimants have often lost under that standard even when the burden on faith was real. The Catholic schools ask the Court to look harder at whether Colorado’s rule is truly neutral, or whether it targets religious conduct while dressing the demand in civil-rights language.
How the Court handles government conditions on funding has also shaped immigration and detention fights, including when the Supreme Court blocked a bid to let immigration judges shelve deportation cases.
Coverage of the argument noted the case could become a fourth major First Amendment loss for Colorado at the Supreme Court in the past decade. That history matters. A state that keeps losing free-exercise and free-speech fights is not suffering random bad luck. It is choosing policies that collide with the Constitution and then defending them to the end.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who watches these cases. Officials announce a progressive rule. Religious institutions object. Lower courts often defer to the state. The Supreme Court then has to decide whether the First Amendment still protects unpopular belief when public money and nondiscrimination codes are in the mix.
Here the concrete facts are straightforward. Catholic preschools kept admissions policies rooted in Church teaching. Colorado answered by locking them out of universal preschool funding. The schools sued. The justices heard the case and, by the account of the argument, showed little comfort with the state’s position.
Related high-court litigation has kept the justices busy on institutional power and individual rights, including a matter in which the Supreme Court directed Hillary Clinton to answer a 2016 Russia lawsuit petition tied to earlier election disputes.
Oral argument is not a final vote. Justices probe both sides. Still, open skepticism toward a state’s exclusion of religious schools is a clear warning light. Colorado built a program with broad voter support and tobacco-tax dollars, then attached a condition that Catholic institutions say they cannot meet without surrendering their identity.
If the Court ultimately sides with the schools, the message will be direct. States may fund preschool. They may set health and safety rules. They may not use the funding spigot to compel religious schools to adopt admissions practices that contradict their faith. Taxpayers who want their children in a Catholic setting should not face a state-engineered penalty for that choice.
If Colorado prevails, the opposite lesson lands. Any state could design “universal” benefits that are universal in name only, open to every provider willing to shed religious standards the government dislikes. That model would shrink the space for faith-based education one program at a time.
The Catholic coalition did not ask for special favors. It asked to keep its beliefs while serving families under a program sold as open to all. Colorado said belief itself was the disqualifier. The justices now have to decide which vision of the First Amendment controls.
Religious schools should not have to trade the Catechism for a tuition check. A free country can fund preschool without deputizing the state to rewrite Church teaching.
