A leading Colorado news site has published a Freedom From Religion Foundation op-ed that spotlights the attempt of religious schools in the state to discriminate while receiving tax money.
“[In 2020,] the Legislature passed a law to implement the program, including basic requirements such as a minimum number of instructional hours, maximum educator-to-child ratios, qualification standards for teachers and other best practices,” Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Charlotte R. Gude writes for the Colorado Newsline. “The Statehouse also required preschool providers to give children an ‘equal opportunity to enroll and receive preschool services regardless of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, lack of housing, income level, or disability’ of both the child and their family. This seems perfectly in line with a universal program, as universal typically means all — without exception.”
Unfortunately, as Charlotte writes, a number of religious preschools are fighting for admission to the program while being unwilling to offer the very equal opportunities the state clearly highlights, leading to a current U.S. Supreme Court case:
However, some religious preschools, including St. Mary’s Catholic Parish, refused to agree to this nondiscrimination requirement and sued Colorado to be let into the program anyway, arguing that Colorado was discriminating against their religious beliefs by requiring them to admit LGBTQ+ children or children with LGBTQ+ families to get funding. Apparently, to them, “universal” should allow exceptions.
If it seems backward to suggest that states can’t condition funds on reasonable requirements, that’s because it is. In fact, most government-funded programs include conditions that must be met before funding is available. Nondiscrimination requirements have been mandated to receive funding for decades. For example, in 1981, the Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant was amended to require funded programs to comply with the Age Discrimination Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act’s nondiscrimination requirements. Even school voucher programs typically require participating private schools to comply with nondiscrimination requirements.
Even more backward is the suggestion that states must fund private entities even when those entities openly state their intention to discriminate, just because the discrimination is based on a religious belief. Governments cannot be in the business of funding discrimination. To require Colorado taxpayers to fund preschools that openly intend to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people because of a religious belief opens the door to state funding for other types of discrimination based on claimed religious beliefs. Any attempt at defining what counts as a religious belief would require deciding that some beliefs don’t count as religious. Preventing the government from making that choice is exactly what the First Amendment was intended to do.
The piece concludes by urging the Supreme Court to stand behind Colorado’s guidelines and keep the program’s benefits from being abused by unwelcoming religious schools.
“If schools want government benefits, they have to play by the government’s rules,” the op-ed states. “Colorado says universal means all preschoolers. Colorado taxpayers voted to fund every preschooler. The Supreme Court must not reverse decades of law that has established where the line between religious liberty and illegal discrimination stands.”
You can read the full op-ed here.
This column is part of FFRF’s initiative to engage with pertinent issues and spread the messages of secularism and freethought to a broader audience.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 1,300 members and two chapters in Colorado, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
