The church preschool wants to take part in the state-funded program, which is meant to give families free preschool in the year before kindergarten. The school says it cannot do so without an exemption from a state rule requiring participating schools to admit any child who applies. That includes children of same-sex parents. The school holds that its faith shapes how it teaches and whom it can enroll as a matter of conscience, and it argues that the state is excluding it for being religious.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled for Colorado on Sept. 30, 2025. The Supreme Court then agreed to take the case.
The court has set aside an unusual amount of time. The Solicitor General filed a motion on Aug. 31 asking for part of the argument. The proposal gives 20 minutes to the preschool and its allies, 10 minutes to the United States, and 30 minutes to the state's side. A federal government that stands up for a church's right to run its own school is worth noting.
The question before the justices is whether a state may open a public benefit to every provider except the one that holds to biblical convictions. In recent years the court has held that a government may not bar religious people from a public program simply because they are religious. Colorado says this case differs because it concerns a rule against discrimination. The preschool says the rule is being used to push its faith out of a program that other private schools may enter.
Who the schoolhouse door belongs to
Set the legal briefs aside for a moment, my friend, and look at the child. Somewhere in Colorado a four-year-old is learning to hold a crayon and say a first prayer. Her parents chose that room. They did not draft it into their lives. They chose it and paid taxes to a state that now says its help is for others.
Scripture never treats the raising of children as the state's job. It hands that task to the mother and father, and it places the child's soul above any program or budget line. Our Lord made this plain when His own disciples tried to shoo the little ones away.
"But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." (Mark 10:14)
Notice what He was displeased about. He was not displeased with children, and He was not displeased with the crowd. He was displeased with the men who stood in the doorway. Whenever a government, however well-meaning, sets itself between a child and a teacher who brings that child to Christ, it takes up the disciples' old post at the door.
The Bible says the training of a child is a long work with a long reward.
"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6)
That training does not wait until the first grade. It starts at the breakfast table and in the first classroom, and Christian parents have always known it. A state that offers free preschool to all but quietly strikes the church from the list has decided that faith is a private hobby and should stay out of the common life. The gospel will not agree to that. Christ is Lord of the whole of life, including the nursery.
The Democratic governor and the state officials who run this program are neighbors, and they deserve respect for their office and a fair hearing. Many of them care about children. But policy that tells a congregation to set aside its convictions as the price of a seat at the public table is policy that opposes the plain word of God. The right answer is to let every parent choose, and let the church that served its community for generations keep serving it.
On Nov. 3, while the country lines up at the polls, nine justices will listen to a question older than the republic: whether a man may bring his child to be taught about God without losing what every other citizen receives. Christians ought to follow it closely and take it to the Lord in their own homes.