Supreme Court hears challenge to Catholic preschools’ exclusion from Colorado-funded program
The Supreme Court heard arguments over whether Colorado may exclude Catholic preschools from its publicly funded universal preschool program because of their admissions policies toward families with same-sex parents. The Archdiocese of Denver and the Trump administration argue that the exclusion violates religious free-exercise rights; Colorado says publicly funded schools must follow the state’s anti-discrimination law. The case could affect how religious institutions seek exemptions from generally applicable laws and follows recent Supreme Court rulings involving public aid to religious schools. Justices questioned both sides about the effect of the admissions policy on LGBTQ+ families and whether the state’s conditions create an unnecessary conflict between rights.
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The Supreme Court heard arguments over whether Colorado may exclude Catholic preschools from its publicly funded universal preschool program because of their admissions policies toward children from same-sex-parent families. The Trump administration and the Archdiocese of Denver urged the justices to side with the schools; Colorado said participating preschools must follow the state’s anti-discrimination law.
The Archdiocese of Denver and St. Mary Catholic Parish argue that their admissions policy reflects religious teachings about same-sex marriage and that excluding them from the program violates their right to freely exercise their religion. They say the schools’ enrollment has fallen 20% since the program began.
Colorado maintains that the schools may teach their religious beliefs, including views on sex, gender and marriage, but must follow the same conditions as other publicly funded preschools. State attorney Helen Norton said families are harmed when they are denied access to a publicly funded school because of a protected characteristic.
The preschool program, established by a 2020 ballot measure, provides public funding for preschool at schools selected by parents. The Catholic schools, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argue that Colorado already permits some preschools to prioritize children with disabilities or from low-income families, and that religiously based admissions criteria should also be allowed.
Archdiocese attorney Nicholas Reaves said allowing Catholic schools to participate would create more preschool places and would not take seats away from the more than 2,000 providers already in the program. Asked by Justice Sonia Sotomayor whether the schools could reject a child because the child’s parents are a same-sex couple, Reaves said that could be permitted if it constituted the school’s sincere religious exercise.
Sotomayor challenged the administration’s position, saying it appeared to argue that the presence of children from same-sex marriages would itself create a problem, and warned against upending an existing legal boundary. Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned why the dispute had arisen if families could choose schools that suited them while religious rights were respected; Norton responded that schools are not interchangeable for families.
The case could affect the scope of a 1990 Supreme Court ruling that generally rejected religious exemptions from laws that apply broadly. The article notes that the court has recently ruled that religious schools could not be excluded from publicly funded private-school programs in Maine and Montana, while it deadlocked in 2025 over a proposal for a publicly funded Catholic charter school after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself.
Religious liberty and nondiscrimination in publicly funded education
Catholic teaching treats religious liberty and fairness in publicly funded education as connected rights: children’s right to education, parents’ responsibility to choose an education consistent with their convictions, and religious communities’ freedom to provide it. Public funding, on this account, should not be allocated in a way that makes genuine choice available only to families who can afford private fees. But the sources do not settle every question about eligibility rules, admissions, employment, or funding conditions: those require attention to the specific law and circumstances.
Education is not merely a service administered by the state. The Congregation for Catholic Education says that a person has a right to choose an educational system, and that parents exercise this choice for children who are not yet able to make it themselves. It therefore rejects a state monopoly as incompatible in principle with educational freedom, while recognizing that how this right is exercised depends partly on each country’s social conditions.
This parental right is tied to religious freedom. In addressing Catholic educators in Newfoundland, John Paul II linked parents’ ability to choose schools suited to their convictions with the right of religious freedom and the freedom of people to associate around shared values. He argued that choice must be real, not merely theoretical, and that undue financial burdens can prevent families from exercising it.
That means religious liberty in education is not only protection against being forced to practise a religion. It also concerns whether parents and religious communities can educate children in accordance with their beliefs, within the limits of the common good. The Church’s educational guidance presents Catholic schools as one legitimate part of a plural school system, helping to protect freedom of conscience and parents’ ability to choose the education they consider appropriate.
The Catholic case for public support is grounded in fairness and effective choice, not simply in the claim that Catholic schools should receive money because they are religious. The Congregation for Catholic Education says that public subsidies should be allocated so parents can genuinely select schools for their children in accordance with conscience, and calls for equality for non-state schools that respects their educational project.
John Paul II likewise argues that in a plural society public support should respond to the educational aspirations of citizens within the limits of the common good. He warns that ignoring the legitimate claims of religious and other groups can deny parents a fundamental right. On this view, public funding can support a diverse range of schools rather than requiring families to choose between a publicly funded education and an education shaped by their convictions.
This argument does not, on the evidence available here, establish that every religious school is entitled to identical funding in every circumstance, regardless of its obligations or the design of a public programme. The sources support the principle that funding arrangements should not make parental choice illusory and that non-state schools’ educational identity should be respected. They do not specify a universal formula for distributing funds or resolve every dispute about conditions attached to funding.
A key distinction is between unjust discrimination against people and respect for the distinct mission of a religious school. Publicly funded education must be considered in light of both fairness to individuals and the freedom of parents and communities to pursue a recognizably religious educational project. The 1998 guidance explicitly joins these concerns: it supports the right of parents to choose and calls for equal treatment of non-state schools while insisting that such equality respect each school’s educational project.
Accordingly, the fact that a school receives public money does not, by itself, mean that it must cease to be religious. Nor do the cited sources provide a complete answer to when a particular admissions, employment, or conduct rule is a legitimate expression of religious mission and when it amounts to unjust discrimination. They offer principles for judging the question, not a detailed legal test for every case.
The distinction matters in both directions. A government should not use funding rules to make religious identity impossible to maintain if the school is otherwise participating in a just funding arrangement. But religious identity should not be treated as a blanket justification for unfair treatment of people. The US bishops, citing Catholic teaching, affirm that people experiencing deep-seated homosexual tendencies “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity”; that statement supports a duty of respectful treatment, though it does not resolve every specific education-policy dispute.
Pius XI’s 1929 teaching strongly criticized schools that excluded religion, describing a supposedly neutral school of that kind as unable in practice to remain religiously neutral. He also argued that religious diversity need not require a single neutral or mixed school system: families and the Church could have scope to provide their own schools, with state assistance where justice required it.
Those statements need to be read alongside the later materials in this context, which emphasize pluralism, parental choice, and Catholic participation within diverse national school systems. The 1982 guidance says that lay Catholics can exercise their role in all kinds of schools, not only Catholic ones, while also maintaining that pluralism of school systems is important for individual freedom. The 1998 guidance similarly envisages Catholic schools working constructively with civil authorities and taking their place within different national school systems.
Thus, these texts do not warrant treating every state school as religiously illegitimate merely because it is publicly administered, or assuming that religious instruction must be compulsory in every publicly funded school. They do support a warning against a system that excludes religion so completely that it denies religious families meaningful freedom or presents its own secular outlook as the only acceptable one. The sources supplied do not provide a comprehensive account of how later Catholic teaching distinguishes state impartiality among religions from the exclusion of religion from public life, so that distinction should not be claimed here as fully settled by these excerpts.
A Catholic assessment of a publicly funded education system can ask whether parents have a real and affordable choice among suitable schools; whether public funds are allocated fairly across different school types; whether funding conditions respect the school’s educational project; and whether people are treated with respect rather than subjected to unjust discrimination. These questions follow from the sources’ combined emphasis on parental choice, distributive justice, religious freedom, and the common good.
The exact legal answer will depend on the country’s laws and the programme involved. The supplied Catholic texts establish principles, but they do not specify how any particular funding scheme should handle admissions, hiring, curriculum requirements, or remedies for alleged discrimination. Those concrete questions remain unresolved without the relevant legal and factual context.