The Supreme Court agreed this month to hear the appeal of a Catholic preschool in Colorado. And if the case turns out like Colorado’s other recent trips to the nation’s highest court, the result will be another resounding win for the First Amendment and another huge loss for a radical, secularized Colorado Democratic Party hell-bent on persecuting Christians in the Rocky Mountain State.
In 2020, Colorado voters passed a Universal Preschool Program that provides money for 15 hours of educational services per week for 4-year-olds at a private or public school of their parents’ choice. To be eligible, private schools were required to sign an agreement stating that they would accept any student “regardless of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, lack of housing, income level, or disability.”
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St. Mary’s Catholic Parish, in the Archdiocese of Denver, runs an inclusive preschool that serves students with disabilities, including Down syndrome and autism, and a student population in which 20% of families receive free or reduced-price meals. But in keeping with Catholic teaching, the school does not recognize same-sex relationships or transgender status. On that basis, Colorado denied the school the right to participate in the state’s not-so-universal preschool program.
“All we want is the freedom to choose the best preschool for our kids without being punished for our faith,” said parishioners Daniel and Lisa Sheley, parents of five children. “Colorado promised families a universal preschool program, then cut out families like ours because we chose a Catholic education.”
When it wants to, Colorado’s Department of Early Childhood makes exceptions to its “nondiscrimination” policies for other kinds of schools. The state admitted it would be fine with a preschool limiting enrollment to “gender-nonconforming children” or “children of color from historically underserved areas.” In other words, if a preschool wanted to be all gay or all black, that would be fine. But if a preschool dared to uphold the values of the traditional American family, it would be barred from participating.
This hostility to Christian practice is not new. In 2012, a gay couple asked Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, to bake a cake celebrating their wedding. Phillips offered to sell them any cake in the store but refused to create one specifically designed to celebrate a same-sex wedding. The next day, the mother of one of the men called and asked Phillips to bake the cake. Again, he refused, explaining that the issue was not the customers’ sexual orientation but that he did not believe in the event they were asking him to help celebrate.
The couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, claiming Phillips had violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. Despite routinely allowing other bakers to refuse cakes with messages disapproving of same-sex marriage, including quotations from Scripture, the commission found Phillips in violation of the law. It ordered him to create cakes for same-sex weddings, attend “comprehensive” training on discrimination, and file quarterly reports for two years detailing steps he had taken to serve gay people.
Phillips appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor, noting the commission’s “clear and impermissible hostility toward [his] sincere religious beliefs” and its false understanding that “religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain.”
Four years after Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Colorado again found itself before the Supreme Court, this time defending a law that barred web designers from posting a notice saying they do not promote same-sex weddings. In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the court held that Colorado could not use its public-accommodations law to compel a speaker or artist to express a message against his or her will.
One might think that, after these high-profile defeats, Colorado would stop persecuting Christians. But in 2025, the state was back in Washington, D.C., defending a 2019 law that made it illegal for licensed mental health professionals to practice so-called conversion therapy. Colorado defined conversion therapy as “any practice or treatment … that attempts … to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”
As a practicing Christian and licensed professional counselor, Kaley Chiles helped teenagers “live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex,” including helping those who sought “to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors, or grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body.” Chiles sued to stop Colorado from enforcing its law against her, and the Supreme Court sided with her after oral arguments last fall. In Chiles v. Salazar, the court held that Colorado’s conversion-therapy ban discriminated against speech based on viewpoint and therefore triggered the highest level of constitutional scrutiny, which Colorado failed to satisfy.
DEMOCRATS DECLARE WAR ON RURAL VIRGINIA
More than 20 years ago, left-wing billionaires founded the Colorado Democracy Alliance to convert Colorado from a purple swing state into a reliably blue one. They succeeded. Every statewide elected office is now controlled by Democrats. But at what cost? The economy is not booming. Hundreds of Colorado businesses recently signed a letter to Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) warning that high taxes and punitive regulations are driving jobs out of the state.
No one suggests businesses are leaving Colorado because it has become a leader in anti-Christian bigotry, although it obviously has. Nevertheless, the state’s eager embrace of gender politics has not been the economic boon many claimed it would be, and it has unquestionably made it harder for traditional families to live and practice their faith in the Rocky Mountain State.
