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SCOTUS Gears Up To Decide Whether Colorado Can Exclude Christians From ‘Universal’ Preschool Program

‘This case is important because it’s an example of the ways that governments have been trying to evade the protections that the Supreme Court has spent decades reaffirming for religious exercise.’

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The state of Colorado has garnered a reputation for getting repeatedly smacked down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Within the past few years alone, the justices have rejected the Centennial State’s efforts to force a Christian baker to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, browbeat a Christian web designer into making a wedding webpage for a same-sex couple, throw Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot, and stop therapists from helping kids confused by gender ideology, to name a few.

The Democrat-led state doesn’t seem to be quite finished, however. Nearly a month after defending its climate lawfare against fossil fuel producers, Colorado officials will once again be back at the high court next week in a high-profile religious liberty case.

In St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, the justices will decide whether the Centennial State can lawfully exclude Catholics who believe in the sanctity of marriage and biological sex from its “universal” preschool program. The Supreme Court will not only grapple with questions surrounding the First Amendment, but with a longstanding precedent that critics argue has sown confusion into the judiciary’s jurisprudence on religious exercise.

“This case is important because it’s an example of the ways that governments have been trying to evade the protections that the Supreme Court has spent decades reaffirming for religious exercise,” Becket Fund for Religious Liberty counsel Amanda Dixon, whose group is representing the Catholic plaintiffs, told The Federalist. “The court has said over and over again in a lot of different contexts that governments can’t burden religious exercise unless they have a really good reason, but governments, like the way that Colorado has here, keep trying to kind of outmaneuver that.”

As The Federalist reported, the legal battle first sprouted in the years after Colorado voters approved a 2020 ballot measure authorizing the establishment of a state-funded “universal” preschool program. The state legislature subsequently codified this program into law, with participating preschools — both public and private — set to receive funding beginning in the 2023-2024 school year.

When registering for the program, schools are required to sign an agreement in which they pledge to offer equal enrollment opportunities without regard to various identity-based characteristics. This includes traits such as race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, so-called “gender identity,” and others.

A group of plaintiffs........

© The Federalist