St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy: Faith or Discrimination?
On April 20th, 2026, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, a First Amendment case concerning whether Colorado may require faith-based preschool providers to comply with nondiscrimination rules protecting families and children on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity as a condition of participating in its Universal Preschool Program. The program at issue was established in 2020 to offer free universal preschool to citizens. If preschools opt into the program, they receive state funding in lieu of funds directly from parents. In order to join the program, however, the state requires schools to sign a nondiscrimination agreement, which includes a clause that mandates schools offer equal opportunity enrollment regardless of religious affiliation, income, disability, race, sexual orientation, or gender identity. The plaintiffs, Lisa and Daniel Sheley, the Archdiocese of Denver, and two Catholic schools, St. Mary’s and St. Bernadette’s sued under section 1983 of 42 U.S.C. arguing that signing this policy infringes on their right to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment.
Three of the petitioners’ arguments are at issue: first, the requirement precludes religious schools from receiving “generally available state benefits” due to their religious character. This, they argue, violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which states that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Their second claim is that the nondiscrimination requirement has made it so that law governing the administration of funds is not in reality “neutral and generally applicable.” This, the petitioners believe, entitles them to an exemption under the Free Exercise Clause. Their third argument is that the requirement violates the Right of Free Speech held by these schools because it “[forces] a group formed for expressive purposes to accept members who oppose those purposes.”
The district court seemed skeptical of each of these claims. In their analysis, the court compared the anti-discrimination law requirement to Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye Inc. v. City of Hialeah and Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The court argued that St. Mary differed from Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye because the law in question did not directly infringe on the religious freedoms of a specific group, in this case, Catholics. Similarly, in Masterpiece Cakeshop, the lower court’s “criticism of the plaintiff’s religious practices” demonstrated that the state hadn’t acted neutrally towards him.
Based on these observations, the court held that the application of the nondiscrimination agreement for Catholic preschools was not subject to strict scrutiny. The court further noted that while participation in the program was voluntary, the state forced all schools to sign the nondiscrimination agreement to participate, meaning that the requirement was entirely neutral. The court also found that the free speech claim raised by the petitioners was, “entirely without merit…[and attempted] to stretch precedent beyond recognizability.” The district court did acknowledge that the part of the agreement requiring religious schools to accept children of other faiths was unlawful. The state did not appeal this change, and the agreement has since been amended to reflect the court’s suggestion. The Plaintiffs appealed two decisions by the district court: 1) the denial of a permanent injunction from agreeing to the nondiscrimination agreement, and 2) the dismissal of the Archdiocese from the case for lack of standing.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision but declined to decide whether the Archdiocese had standing. Quoting Fisher v. Okla. Health Care Auth. (2003), the Tenth Circuit laid out four standards that the enforcement of the agreement had to meet in order to qualify for a permanent injunction. First, the petitioner must prove “actual success or merits” of the item they seek an injunction against. Second, they must show that "irreparable harm” will be done unless an injunction is issued. Third, the “threatened injury [must outweigh] the harm that the injunction may cause the opposing party.” And finally, if the injunction is issued, it must not adversely affect the public interest. In this case, the court noted that only the first part of this standard was being considered. For this reason, the court considered only the merits of the schools’ First Amendment claims.
The Tenth Circuit panel viewed the situation similarly to the district court. In particular, they noted that the three main rulings regarding the inability of the state to withhold funds from religious schools (Carson v. Makin (2022), Espinoza v. Minnesota Dep’t of Revenue (2020), and Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer (2017)) were distinguishable from this case. Unlike in Carson, Espinoza, and Trinity Lutheran, the Catholic schools in question were not being excluded from anything; rather, they desired an exception from equal and neutral treatment.
The Catholic schools then argued their religious practices were being infringed upon incidentally rather than specifically targeted. To prove this, the court stated, the petitioners needed to demonstrate that the law in question was not “neutral and generally applicable.” The appeals court found that these standards were met. In the end, the appeals court upheld the ruling by the lower court.
Given some of the recent Supreme Court rulings on LGBTQ issues in cases like 303 Creative v. Elenis and Masterpiece Cake Shop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, it will be interesting to see how the court decides this case. In both of these cases, the court took a strong stance in favor of religious freedom, asserting that the state cannot force website designers and cake makers, respectively, to create content for LGBTQ+ couples. This case, like 303 Creative and Masterpiece Cake Shop, could have major implications for whether the state may impose anti-discrimination laws on minority groups under its control. Ultimately, the issue boils down to a foundational Constitutional question: what is more important, supporting faith or fighting discrimination?