Supreme Court Takes Up Another Clash Between Religious & Lgbtq Rights

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Colorado can exclude Catholic preschools from the state’s universal pre-K program because they won’t agree to accept children with same-sex parents.

The justices announced Monday that they will take up a lawsuit contending that Colorado’s stance violates the religious freedom rights of the Catholic schools. The case is likely to be argued in the fall.

Colorado officials have emphasized that their program deliberately includes faith-based preschools, but requires them to abide by the state’s anti-discrimination laws, including those forbidding discrimination against LGBTQ people.

A federal district court judge in Denver and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Catholic preschools’ arguments, concluding that the state had the authority to deny those schools an exemption they sought from the anti-discrimination requirements.

The Trump administration is backing the Catholic preschools in the fight and called the lower courts’ rulings “deeply problematic.”

Religious freedom advocates backing the Catholic preschools asked the Supreme Court to use the case, St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, to overrule a landmark 1990 decision that found states can apply “neutral, generally applicable” laws that intrude on religiously motivated practices without running afoul of the First Amendment.

However, in its order Monday, the Supreme Court indicated it does not plan to consider overturning that ruling, Employment Division v. Smith. Instead, the justices signaled that they will wrestle with the issue of whether exemptions and flexibility in the Colorado program require the state to grant exemptions to the Catholic preschools.

The 1990 high court decision limiting the government’s duty to offer religious accommodations was widely unpopular with lawmakers, who overwhelmingly passed a law to overturn it three years later, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. However, the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that RFRA’s broader protections for religious practice do not apply to state and local governments.

Colorado voters approved the universal pre-K program in 2020, 68 percent to 32 percent. Using funding from new taxes on tobacco products, the arrangement pays tuition for all four-year-olds to attend 15 hours of preschool per week.