School Year Begins With Religious Lawsuits

By Bill Donohue, Catholic League president 

The new school year is beginning with lawsuits to ensure religious liberty. 

In Colorado, the Denver Archdiocese is suing the state over strictures in its new universal preschool program that would force Catholic schools to violate Catholic teachings. To be explicit, the archdiocese is saying that Colorado’s Department of Early Childhood would mandate that Catholic preschools enroll “LGBTQ people.” This cannot be done without violating Catholic teachings on marriage, the family and sexuality. 

The archdiocese correctly argues that accepting the children of gay parents “is likely to lead to intractable conflicts” because the Church does not believe in same-sex marriage. The Church also rejects gender ideology, the idea that the sexes are interchangeable. Ergo, to accept students who have “transitioned” to the opposite sex is contradictory to its professed beliefs. 

In short, Colorado’s new preschool program does not provide for religious exemptions, and is therefore the subject of the lawsuit. 

In California, Orthodox Jewish families are suing the state for excluding religious schools from public funding for young people with disabilities. The state’s Education Code allows funding for “nonpublic, nonsectarian schools,” but provides no money for religious schools. Three Orthodox Jewish families are suing, insisting that their disabled children have religious needs that cannot be met in traditional public or private schools. 

Catholic parents who have children with disabilities are also at risk. At the federal level, Congress has long committed funds for the disabled, knowing that their needs require special attention. Those needs should not be exclusionary of religion.   

The secular vision of morality, which is entertained by the ruling class, is intolerant of religious liberty. State officials know that the courts are much more religious friendly than they are, making these lawsuits unnecessary. It just goes to show the zealotry that imbues in them. 

This is a never-ending battle for our First Amendment right to religious liberty.