COMMENTARY: The justices are again being asked to referee who gets to worship, preach or educate without being treated as a second-class citizen.
The Supreme Court will open its new term on the first Monday of October with a docket that is shaping up to be a syllabus in religious liberty and parental rights, and that is no coincidence.
For several years running, the court has kept returning to the same terrain: believers’ right to practice their faith without being pushed to the margins of public life and parents’ right to direct their children’s upbringing. The docket is not even finished being assembled; the court will add cases through the fall, so expect this list to grow.
Consider what is already before the justices or knocking at their door.
Colorado
St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, out of Colorado, asks whether a state can offer a “universal” preschool benefit to every family except those who choose a Catholic parish school. Colorado’s universal pre-K program required participating preschools to accept a nondiscrimination policy that Catholic parishes could not follow without compromising their religious identity.
The Archdiocese of Denver, two Denver-area parishes, and parents who want only to send their children to
