A coalition that includes the U.S. solicitor general, 21 states, a number of faith groups, congressmen, and legal scholars is asking the state of Colorado to stop discriminating against Catholic preschools.
Colorado theoretically has a universal preschool program, but faith-based schools and families who won’t cave to Democrats’ radical and anti-Biblical ideology are excluded. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld Colorado’s religious discrimination, unfortunately, in the case of St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy. But the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case; hence, the coalition filed 29 friend-of-the-court briefs, according to the Becket Fund.
West Virginia led the group of states and encouraged the Supreme Court to prevent state governments from expressing hostility to specific religious groups that don't support some radical ideas on biological sex. The congressmen chose to emphasize how including religious educators in public programs is not only valuable for young families but also in accord with the actions of our founders, according to the Becket Fund. Despite the oft-repeated quote from a letter of Thomas Jefferson's about "separation of church and state," many founders talked about the importance of religion in the public square and incorporated prayers and blessings into official government proclamations and functions.
In his friend-of-the-court brief, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer commented, “The substantial burden on religious schools’ ability to engage in core religious exercise is patent.” He also clarified that the objection to the Catholic schools is specifically about their refusal to affirm radical LGBTQ ideology.
“The question animating this case is whether the Free Exercise Clause, U.S. Const. Amend. I, forbids Colorado from refusing to accommodate petitioners’ religious exercise,” Sauer noted. He later added, “Colorado’s law treats comparable secular conduct better than religious exercise by carving out two categorical exemptions from the equal-opportunity mandate for secular conduct, while refusing to accommodate religious conduct.” This is not in accord with the First Amendment.
Campus student groups went a step further by asking the Supreme Court to overturn Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, which prevented student organizations from restricting membership based on religious beliefs.
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Becket Fund also highlighted the following:
A wide array of diverse faith groups, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the National Apostolic Christian Leadership Conference, the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, and the Coalition for Jewish Values emphasized the problems facing specific religious groups...
• The Conscience Project and five Colorado families detailed the important role Catholic education has played for their families and the harms of Colorado’s religious discrimination.
• Public policy groups, think tanks, law school centers, and education choice advocates, including EdChoice, Manhattan Institute, The Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies, and Notre Dame Law School Education Law Project, affirmed the importance of religious schools as options for families and the continued efforts to exclude them from publicly available programs.
This case could test the highly problematic view of separation of church and state that has grown up over the years, and that is not in accord with the original Founding understanding. The Founding Fathers never meant to exclude religion from the public square; they meant to prevent government officials from discriminating against a specific religious group. But that's just what Colorado's government is doing.
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