Children Should Not Be Turned Away from Publicly-Funded Preschools Because of Who Their Parents Are

On November 3, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a case concerning four-year-old children being denied access to publicly-funded preschool programs because their parents are LGBTQ. 

Interfaith Alliance and our affiliate Interfaith Alliance of Colorado filed a friend of the court brief in the case this week as part of our work on LGBTQ freedom and religious liberty. 

Our friends at Family Equality have an excellent resource page on the case. Here are the key facts:

• In 2022, Colorado established a universal preschool program to ensure that all children in the state can access early childhood education no matter what. The program provides public funding for voluntary, universal preschool and requires participating schools to sign a nondiscrimination agreement that mandates equal enrollment opportunities to all families. 
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• St. Mary argues that it’s being forced to opt out of this program because it will not comply with the nondiscrimination agreement. The school — and petitioners St. Bernadette, a few parents, and the archdiocese of Denver — claim that the state’s refusal to exempt them from these rules is religious discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. 
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• When this case made it to the Tenth Circuit, the court rejected the preschool’s argument. According to that decision, Colorado’s conditions for participating in the program are neutral and generally applied to every preschool — regardless of religion. 
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• St. Mary is now asking the Supreme Court to reverse that decision.
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Our amicus brief argues that Colorado did not infringe on religious liberty in setting up its program. 

“Free exercise of religion is a core constitutional guarantee. But it does not entitle religious believers to disregard laws that apply to everyone else,” our brief states. “Petitioners’ argument rests on the flawed premise that Colorado singled out their religious beliefs for disfavored treatment. But the record demonstrates that Colorado did the opposite. At every stage of designing and implementing its universal preschool program, Colorado sought out faith-based providers, and it wrote and enforced its rules to keep families of every faith from being turned away.”

Read the full brief here on the website of the U.S. Supreme Court.