The Supreme Court appeared ready to side with Colorado Catholic preschools shut out of taxpayer preschool funds for keeping church teaching on marriage, a fight the state need not have forced.

In a lively two-hour session, the Court’s conservative majority offered clear support for Catholic schools challenging Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program rules that condition public money on equal-opportunity enrollment, including for children of LGBTQ parents. Fox News reported the justices heard arguments in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy as Catholic parishes, backed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said the conditions unconstitutionally punish their religious admissions standards.

Colorado’s program, created by a 2020 ballot measure and paid for with tobacco-tax revenue, offers about $6,300 per child for up to 15 hours a week of preschool. Participating schools must give eligible children an equal chance to enroll “regardless of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, lack of housing, income level, or disability.” The Archdiocese runs 34 preschools that admit families who support Catholic teaching on same-sex relationships and gender identity. Two parishes sued, arguing the state is using the purse to force them to abandon that faith or lose the benefit.

Parent Erika Nagle, whose children attend a Littleton facility tied to St. Mary, told reporters her family was denied access to the funding and had to cover the extra costs. She put the exclusion in plain terms.

"We are being excluded from this benefit because we are Catholic."

Nagle added that a state preaching inclusion is “actively going out of their way to exclude a huge chunk of people because of our religious beliefs,” and that two archdiocesan preschools have already closed. Becket told the Court enrollment at those schools has fallen 20 percent. The New York Post reported Nagle’s household lost roughly $12,000 in aid for her children.

State attorney Helen Norton told the justices Colorado “welcomes religious preschools” and asks only that they meet “the same conditions that every publicly funded preschool must meet, religious and secular alike.” Norton noted Catholic Charities and other faith-based schools, dozens of Christian campuses plus Muslim and Jewish ones, still take part. Plaintiffs answer that the nondiscrimination condition is designed so traditional Catholic schools cannot comply without surrendering doctrine.

Kavanaugh presses Colorado for a needless clash

Justice Brett Kavanaugh zeroed in on practical room for both sides. He asked the state’s lawyer why Colorado would not seek a win for everyone when thousands of schools already operate in the state.

"Why not seek the win/win?"

Kavanaugh continued that parents and schools can match without trampling religion.

"There are plenty of opportunities to respect the rights of the religious believers and respect the ability of LGBT parents to find among the 2,000 [Colorado] schools an appropriate fit for their children."

He called the dispute “a would-be solution in search of a problem that is unnecessary to create this clash,” adding there is room for every child to find a good fit while religious rights are respected. Those exchanges fit a broader pattern in which Kavanaugh’s written work has drawn close attention on high-stakes questions of government power.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed the same fault line from another angle, asking counsel to explain the difference between openly barring Catholic schools and imposing a condition the state knows those schools cannot accept. Justice Elena Kagan framed the legal question as whether religious institutions must be treated better than others, while stressing they cannot be treated differently in the opposite direction. Chief Justice John Roberts reminded the Catholic side that earlier victories for religious schools involved laws that “expressly discriminated against religious schools on its face,” and said, “That’s not the case here.” Even so, the overall tone left Colorado on defense.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor challenged the plaintiffs directly on exclusion and public money.

"I'm hard-pressed to think that, given those [Catholic] teachings, that any homosexual family is going to choose to go to one of these schools, but that should be their choice, not your choice to exclude them."

She later said the request amounted to an official state statement that it will “subsidize you with public money even though, because I have a right to reject children.” The Trump administration has signaled support for the religious plaintiffs. A ruling is expected by next spring. The Court is also weighing whether to narrow a 36-year-old precedent holding that religious practices do not automatically exempt people from generally applicable laws.

Colorado’s track record meets another free-exercise test

The Washington Examiner noted the justices’ skepticism tees up another potential First Amendment loss for Colorado, which has already absorbed multiple high-court setbacks in the past decade over similar culture-war enforcement. Breitbart highlighted that the conservative-majority Court, including three justices nominated by President Donald Trump, has repeatedly sided with religious-rights claims against the state, including the Colorado baker who declined a same-sex wedding cake and a Christian counselor who challenged a conversion-therapy ban. Becket CEO Mark Rienzi put the funding double standard this way: “The religious beliefs that fit with the government of Colorado are acceptable and those parents can get reimbursed but not the other ones.”

National Review coverage framed the suit as a warning about how taxpayer programs can become tools to pressure people of faith. Tim Busch argued Colorado authorities are “blatantly infringing on Catholic families’ First Amendment rights,” and that reliance on public money can threaten fidelity to belief. The First Amendment text at the center of the fight is familiar: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Colorado’s conditions, the Catholic side says, turn a generally available preschool benefit into a loyalty test. Democrats who once cheered court expansion after other high-profile losses may find little comfort if this case follows the same path as prior free-exercise wins; calls to enlarge the bench have already become a recurring progressive response.

The practical stakes are concrete. Families who want Catholic formation for their toddlers lose thousands of dollars a year. Schools that refuse to revise doctrine watch enrollment drop and campuses close. State officials insist the rules are neutral and that plenty of religious providers already comply. Catholic educators reply that “neutral” conditions knowingly exclude traditional parishes while the state dangles the same carrot Nagle described: incentives to leave the education they actually want. That is the free-exercise conflict the justices must resolve. Readers tracking other active dockets will recognize the same Court that has weighed border-security disputes and heard Democratic cities urge it to preserve Biden-era immigration freezes.

Nagle’s charge remains the simplest statement of the policy’s effect: a benefit open to others is closed to her family because they are Catholic. Kavanaugh’s “win/win” question still hangs over the state’s choice to make that exclusion a condition of preschool aid. When government money is used to reward one set of beliefs and freeze out another, the First Amendment is not a side issue. It is the whole case. Colorado can fund preschool without forcing churches to revise their creed, if the Court makes the state do so.