The United States Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, No. 25-581, a case that asks whether Colorado may exclude a Catholic parish school from the state’s universal preschool programme because the school gives admission preference to families who share the Catholic faith and requires its teachers to be practising Catholics. The case, arising from Colorado’s Universal Preschool Colorado programme, has become a closely watched test of the limits of religious freedom in public funding, following a series of Supreme Court decisions that have expanded protections for religious schools and organisations seeking to participate in government benefit programmes. A decision is expected by the end of the court’s term, in June 2027, and no outcome should be predicted from the tone of oral argument alone.
St. Mary Catholic Parish in Colorado operates a preschool that, like many Catholic schools, integrates Catholic teaching into its curriculum and community life. It gives admission preference to Catholic families, and it requires teachers to be practising Catholics, on the ground that teachers are expected to model and transmit the faith to young children. When Colorado launched its universal preschool programme, which provides public funding for preschool places for four-year-olds across the state, St. Mary applied to participate. Colorado officials denied the application, on the ground that the school’s admission and employment practices violated the programme’s non-discrimination requirements, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion in admission and employment for participating providers. St. Mary challenged that denial as a violation of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, which protects the free exercise of religion, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
The case reached the Supreme Court after lower courts divided on the question. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision that St. Mary is asking the Supreme Court to reverse, upheld Colorado’s exclusion, distinguishing between discrimination based on religious status, which the Supreme Court has held is generally impermissible in public funding programmes, and discrimination based on religious conduct or beliefs, which the lower court held may be a permissible basis for exclusion in some circumstances. That distinction, between status and use, between being religious and acting on religious beliefs, has become central to recent religious freedom litigation, and the Supreme Court’s decision in St. Mary could clarify, narrow, or reject it.
At oral argument, the justices explored that distinction from several angles. Counsel for St. Mary argued that Colorado’s policy penalises the parish for its religious identity and for its religiously motivated practices, which are inseparable from that identity, and that a Catholic school cannot be expected to abandon its faith-based admission and hiring practices as the price of participating in a generally available public benefit. Counsel for Colorado argued that the state is not penalising religion, but enforcing neutral non-discrimination rules that apply to all providers, religious and secular, and that requiring the state to fund a school that discriminates on the basis of religion would itself raise Establishment Clause concerns and would undermine the programme’s goal of providing inclusive, non-discriminatory preschool places for all Colorado children. The justices’ questions, as is typical at oral argument, tested both positions, probing hypotheticals, prior precedent, and the practical consequences of a ruling either way.
St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy and Colorado preschool funding
The Supreme Court’s recent religious freedom jurisprudence provides the backdrop for the case. In Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer (2017), the court held that Missouri could not exclude a church-run preschool from a generally available programme to resurface playgrounds solely because it was a church. In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), the court held that Montana could not exclude religious schools from a tax-credit scholarship programme solely because they were religious. In Carson v. Makin (2022), the court held that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a tuition assistance programme because they provided religious instruction, extending the principle from status to use. St. Mary argues that those decisions compel a ruling in its favour, because Colorado, like Maine, is excluding a religious school because of its religious practices. Colorado argues that its programme is different, because it involves direct public funding for preschool, with non-discrimination conditions that are central to the programme’s design, and because the school’s practices involve discrimination against children and teachers on the basis of religion, not merely religious instruction.
The distinction between funding and non-discrimination conditions is likely to be important. Colorado will argue that it is entitled to set conditions for participation in its own programme, including that providers not discriminate, and that those conditions are neutral and generally applicable. St. Mary will argue that a condition that requires a religious school to abandon its faith-based practices is not neutral, but targets religion, and that the Free Exercise Clause does not permit the state to condition a public benefit on surrendering a constitutional right. The court will need to decide whether Colorado’s non-discrimination rules are, in practice, a neutral condition or a penalty on religious exercise, and whether the state’s interest in non-discrimination is sufficient to justify any burden on religious exercise under the court’s current framework, which, since Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021) and related cases, has applied strict scrutiny to laws that are not neutral and generally applicable.
Another issue is the role of teachers in a religious school. St. Mary argues that its teachers are not merely employees, but ministers of the faith, in the sense used by the Supreme Court in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru (2020), which held that the ministerial exception bars employment discrimination claims by teachers at religious schools who perform vital religious functions. If teachers are ministers, Colorado’s attempt to regulate their hiring on non-discrimination grounds may raise additional constitutional concerns, because the state may not interfere with a religious organisation’s selection of those who transmit its faith. Colorado argues that the ministerial exception, which applies to employment discrimination lawsuits, does not entitle a school to public funding while discriminating, and that the state may condition funding on compliance with non-discrimination rules even where it could not directly regulate hiring. The interaction between the ministerial exception and public funding conditions is a novel question that the court may need to address.
The admission preference for Catholic families raises a related, but distinct, question. St. Mary argues that giving preference to families who share its faith is central to its mission as a Catholic school, creating a community of faith in which children are educated in a shared religious environment. Colorado argues that a publicly funded programme should be open to all children, regardless of religion, and that a preference for Catholic families excludes non-Catholic children from a public benefit. The court will need to weigh the school’s interest in maintaining a faith community against the state’s interest in ensuring that public funds do not support exclusionary admissions, and to decide whether the First Amendment protects a religious school’s right to prefer co-religionists in admission when it seeks public funding.
For Colorado’s universal preschool programme, the stakes are practical as well as legal. The programme, launched in 2023, provides funding for preschool places for all four-year-olds in the state, with additional hours for children from low-income families, children with disabilities, and children learning English. It relies on a mix of public school, private, and faith-based providers to meet demand, and excluding faith-based providers that do not comply with non-discrimination rules could reduce capacity, particularly in rural areas where Catholic and other religious schools are among the few providers available. Conversely, requiring the state to fund providers that discriminate could, Colorado argues, undermine public trust in the programme and exclude children from publicly funded places because of their religion or their parents’ religion. The court’s decision will therefore affect not only St. Mary, but the design and operation of the programme as a whole.
For other states, the decision will provide guidance on how to design universal preschool and other early childhood programmes that include religious providers. States that are considering or operating universal preschool programmes, including California, New Mexico, and Vermont, will watch the decision closely, as will states with school choice programmes that include religious schools. A ruling for St. Mary would signal that states may not condition participation in generally available funding programmes on abandoning faith-based admission or hiring practices, at least where those practices are central to the school’s religious mission. A ruling for Colorado would signal that states may enforce non-discrimination conditions, at least where those conditions are neutral, generally applicable, and central to the programme’s purpose, and that religious schools that wish to participate must comply with those conditions.
What the Supreme Court hearing means for religious preschools
The case also raises broader questions about the relationship between religious freedom and anti-discrimination law, a tension that has run through Supreme Court cases on wedding vendors, foster care agencies, and employment. In each area, the court has sought to balance the right to free exercise of religion against the government’s interest in preventing discrimination, with results that have varied by context. St. Mary is the latest chapter in that ongoing debate, and its outcome will be read as a signal of how the current court, with a six-justice conservative majority, views that balance in the context of public funding for early childhood education. It should not, however, be read as a referendum on religion in general, or on Catholic education in particular, but as a specific legal question about a specific programme and a specific set of practices.
For parents in Colorado, the decision will have tangible consequences. Catholic parents who wish to send their children to St. Mary with public funding will either be able to do so, if the court rules for St. Mary, or will need to pay privately or choose another provider, if the court rules for Colorado. Non-Catholic parents who wish to send their children to St. Mary, or who object to public funding for a school that prefers Catholic families, will be affected in the opposite direction. For teachers, the decision will affect whether faith-based hiring requirements can coexist with public funding, and whether teachers at religious preschools can be required to be practising members of the faith as a condition of employment in a publicly funded programme. Those are not abstract questions for the people involved, but decisions about where children go to school, who teaches them, and how public money is spent.
As the court deliberates, the parties and interested organisations will file additional briefs, and the public debate will continue, but the legal question will remain the one presented to the court: whether Colorado’s exclusion of St. Mary violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The court’s answer, when it comes in June 2027, will be a written opinion, with concurrences and dissents that may reveal divisions among the justices about the scope of religious freedom, the meaning of neutrality, and the role of non-discrimination conditions in public funding. Until then, Colorado’s programme will continue to operate under the lower court’s ruling, with St. Mary excluded, and the preschool places funded by the state will remain subject to the non-discrimination rules that are now under challenge.
It is important, finally, to distinguish this case from cases involving discrimination on other grounds, such as race or sex, where the Supreme Court has applied different legal frameworks and where the state’s interest in preventing discrimination is, in the court’s jurisprudence, particularly strong. Religious discrimination in admission and employment by a religious organisation raises distinct First Amendment questions, because the organisation’s religious identity is itself the basis for the preference, and because the Free Exercise Clause protects the right of religious organisations to define their own community and mission. Whether that protection extends to a publicly funded preschool, and whether it outweighs the state’s interest in non-discrimination in a universal programme, is the question the court must now decide.
Sources
Sources: This article is based on reporting by the cited outlets. USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from Bull Post, Bastille Post and Straits Times.