Supreme Court Should Not Compel Public Funding of Preschool Discrimination Against LGBTQ+ Families
Source: Madiba K. Dennie. "Supreme Court leaning yes on discrimination against 4-year-olds.." November 4, 2026. slate.com
The Gist
The author argues that Colorado's free preschool program simply asks every school that takes state money to accept all children, and that two Catholic preschools want an exemption so they can turn away kids with gay parents or transgender kids while still getting public funds. She says that would open the door to broad, taxpayer-funded discrimination and harm LGBTQ+ families, and that the conservative justices seem to brush off that harm.
Conclusion
The Supreme Court should not rule that Colorado must fund religious preschools that refuse to sign its nondiscrimination agreement; the conservative justices' apparent inclination to do so would create a harmful right to publicly financed discrimination and reflects a refusal to acknowledge harm to people unlike themselves.
Premises
- Colorado's universal preschool program is neutral and generally applicable: every participating provider must sign the same nondiscrimination agreement, and there is no evidence it was designed to exclude Catholics.
- The policy is rationally related to an important state interest in protecting children from discriminatory barriers to publicly funded education, so under ordinary doctrine it should survive.
- Religious groups in this case are treated the same as everyone else, so the parishes are really demanding better treatment, namely state subsidy of their rejection of children with LGBTQ+ parents or transgender children.
- There is no principled basis to distinguish religious objections to admitting children of gay parents from religious objections to admitting Black children, so a special religious exemption would open the door to broad, publicly funded discrimination.
- Such exemptions and funding inflict real harm on targeted communities' ability to participate in public life as equals and on the country's functioning as a pluralistic society.
- The conservative justices' counterpoints (other preschools exist, little evidence of practical problems, strict scrutiny is not the end of the world) minimize or ignore this harm, mirroring 'separate water fountain' reasoning.
Assumptions
- The preschools' refusal to enroll these children constitutes discrimination rather than a protected exercise of religion that the state must accommodate.
- Availability of alternative preschools does not cure the dignitary and equality harm of exclusion.
- Government funding conditioned on nondiscrimination does not impermissibly burden religious exercise when it applies equally to all providers.
- Racial and sexual-orientation discrimination are analogous for purposes of evaluating religious exemptions.
- Oral argument questions reliably reveal how justices will ultimately rule and reflect their real motivations.
- Conservative justices' skepticism is due to indifference to harm rather than a principled view of free exercise doctrine.