Supreme Court Takes Up Colorado Catholic Preschool Case

The Denver Gazette, in a report by Lindsay Whitehurst with a contribution from Luige Del Puerto, lays out the latest courtroom headache for Colorado’s ruling class: the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up a challenge from two Catholic parishes and their preschools over the state’s exclusion of them from Colorado’s so-called universal pre-K program.

At the heart of it is a simple question the Denver crowd has spent years trying to complicate. Can the state promise a universal benefit, then wall off religious schools unless they abandon core religious beliefs to get in the door? The Catholic schools say no. Colorado says they are welcome to participate, just so long as they comply with the state’s nondiscrimination rules tied to sexual orientation and gender identity.

The article notes that the case arrives with the backing of the Trump administration and lands before a Supreme Court that has already shown very little patience for Colorado when the state decides the First Amendment is more of a suggestion than a guardrail.

The Bullet Point Brief

• The Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge from St. Mary Catholic Parish in Littleton, joined by St. Bernadette in Lakewood and the Archdiocese of Denver, over Colorado’s pre-K funding setup. Translation: the adults have entered the room.
• Colorado says religious schools can join the program, but only if they play by state rules on sexual orientation and gender identity. That is a funny way to define religious liberty. It sounds a lot more like, “You are free to agree with us.”
• The state’s universal preschool program was sold as universal after voters approved funding in 2020. As usual, universal apparently means everybody except the people the Denver elite find unfashionable.
• The article points out that about 40 faith-based preschool operators are already in the program, serving more than 900 children. But these particular Catholic preschools stayed out because they believed their religious views would put them in the legal crosshairs. Hard to sign up for a benefit when the fine print reads like a trap.
• The justices will also consider the broader legal framework for religious exemptions from generally applicable laws, meaning this case could reach beyond preschool and into the larger question Colorado keeps losing on: whether government can strong-arm people of faith and call it neutrality with a straight face.

My Bottom Line

This has all the markings of another Supreme Court rebuke aimed squarely at Colorado’s governing class. Our once-great state keeps sending the same message from Denver and Boulder: your rights are fully respected right up until they become inconvenient to the ideological project. Then suddenly “inclusion” gets very selective.

The people running this circus love to preach tolerance, diversity, and choice. But when a family chooses Catholic education, or a religious school declines to bend theology to match the latest government memo, the mask slips. Then it is not tolerance. It is compulsion dressed up in soft language and taxpayer branding.

Let’s also be honest about the pattern here. Colorado has developed a bad habit of behaving like the Constitution is an obstacle to be managed rather than a covenant to be honored. Time after time, the state charges ahead with culture-war policymaking, and time after time the courts have to remind our betters that no, they do not get to bulldoze free exercise rights because they attended a panel discussion in Cherry Creek.

My guess is the state gets slapped again, and probably hard. Maybe 8-1. Maybe 9-0. The only real suspense is what happens after that. Will the same elites who never met a constitutional limit they liked actually respect the ruling, or will they go right back to looking for a new loophole, a new commission, and a new consultant to help them ignore it more professionally?

Source: The Denver Gazette