On Tuesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about a case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. The case involves Colorado’s exclusion of a Catholic church from a “universal” preschool program.

The article reports:

Justices heard oral arguments in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy on Tuesday. 

“This is not a zero sum game. Letting families use universal preschool funding at Catholic schools won’t take away a single seat from the over 2,000 preschools already participating in the program,” argued the plaintiffs’ attorney Nicholas Reaves before the court.  “In fact, letting Catholic schools in will create more seats for everyone even for families who disagree with Catholic teachings.”  

Colorado’s actions were at the center of religious freedom disputes before the high court in 2018, 2023, and earlier this year, losing each case.  

In this case, the state’s program provides all children with up to 15 hours of tuition-free preschool, but it requires participating schools to admit LGBTQ-identifying children and the children of LGBTQ-identifying parents. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal justice, became animated at several points during her questioning, asserting that the “bottom line” was “Your Catholic schools will reject the child merely because their parents are homosexual.” 

Reaves disagreed.  

“If the government is excluding someone from a public benefit solely on account of their religious exercise, that would trigger strict scrutiny,” Reaves said. “The government would have to come forward and say, ‘we have a really good reason for this.’ And we just don’t think they’ve done that in this case.”  

This is a preschool program. When did we get to a point where preschool children were identifying as LGBTQ? In my mind, the school has no right to deny entrance to a child because the child’s parents are part of the LGBTQ community, but a preschooler who claims to be part of that community is not your average preschooler and has probably  been taught some things along the way that might be a problem in the classroom.

Colorado has a history of not always honoring the free exercise of religion. The article reminds us:

In 2023 and 2018, the high court held that Colorado could not compel a Christian website designer and a Christian baker, respectively, to provide specific creative services for same-sex weddings.