Jordan Varberg - Can Religious Schools Keep Public Funding?

The Supreme Court is taking up a major case that could redefine the balance between religious freedom and public funding. At the center of the fight: whether faith-based schools can participate in taxpayer-funded programs while maintaining religious admission policies.

Jordan Varberg, attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, joins the program to explain what’s at stake and how the ruling could impact schools, families, and religious rights nationwide.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome back to the Lawrence Lawrence and Show. Well, the U.S. Supreme Court is going to decide who gets your tax dollars and who does not. Should a church be allowed to turn your child away to get those tax dollars? Jordan Farber joins me now. He's an attorney for the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty. And Jordan, for the life of me, I don't even understand why this is such an issue. Catholic preschools say you can't exclude them from government funding, and I agree you can. I'm not Catholic, so I don't have a bias that way, but I'm I'm pro-religion, uh uh I'm pro-faith. And these Catholic preschools are saying you can't exclude us just because we won't admit kids from LGBTQ families. I guess I'd turn it around, Jordan. Why are the LGBTQ families bringing their kids to a school that is run by a church whose very basic beliefs is is antithetical to their lifestyle?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, and of course, the the mission of the schools in this case is precisely to partner with parents as they raise their children in the great traditions of the Catholic faith. So these policies are are rooted in millennia-old religious beliefs about the nature of human sexuality. And Colorado simply can't exclude schools from participating in a program just because they believe Catholic things about the nature of sexuality.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

So why is it that I mean, does Colorado just have lawyers who went to a different law school and they don't understand that what the Constitution says about government not establishing rules that try to dictate to people what their faith may be?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I do think Colorado uh needs quite a significant uh schedule of coursework when it comes to the First Amendment. They've lost so many First Amendment cases in recent years, I'm starting to lose count. I think this is going to be yet another example of the court needing to remind Colorado that the First Amendment exists in this country.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Well, and in fact, when they say religious schools, yeah, you're welcome to participate. You can get the money for these programs, but you have to follow the non-discrimination laws, which means they have to admit people uh into the schools or families into the schools whose very lifestyle is contradicted by the Catholic faith. In fact, by most Christian faiths.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Right. So what Colorado is saying is sure, we'll let you in, but only if you're willing to sacrifice your religious beliefs, right? That's not inclusion. Colorado pretends to be a state that cares about inclusion, but when it comes to Catholics and other religious groups, they're not inclusive at all.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Is it Henry Ford style inclusion? Uh you like you can buy any car, a car in any color you want as long as it's black back in the day, uh, was the joke with Henry Ford, you know, because he made all of his cars black. It was cheaper to color, you know. But if you say, yeah, well, as long as you'll simply throw your faith aside and your faith doesn't mean anything, then you can sign up for the money. Otherwise, you're denied the money by the government. And the government of Colorado thinks this is constitutional and that they're going to be able to defend this in front of the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

If I were them, I'd be awfully scared of what what kind of reception they're going to get. The Supreme Court in recent years has done a terrific job uh explaining what the First Amendment requires in cases like this. Time and again, they have said that you cannot exclude religious groups from public funding programs, and that's exactly what Colorado is doing here. I I I really can't tell you why they think this sort of thing is legal. It it might be that they just don't care. I don't really know.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

I mean, that's what I kind of wonder about, Jordan, is do you suspect that maybe Colorado knows we know we're wrong, we know we're gonna lose this one, but it'll be kind of a Pyrrhic victory. We'll we'll burn the place down on the way to losing, and we'll we'll have the glory of having gone down in flames.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah, that's their idea of glory. I think they need a new idea. Um I don't think it's very good for their interests or really anyone's interest to receive yet another First Amendment decision down, uh striking down their governmental policies. Uh it's it's shocking that they want to endure that type of loss again, but it appears they do.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Well, and the other thing, Jordan, that that I find kind of strange about this is not just that you'd have LGBTQ families who would say, I want my child to be in a school where the where the child is going to be taught that the LGBTQ lifestyle is just absolutely wrong. But I wonder whether or not they're trying to use the government as a cudgel, as a a lever to force their point of view uh on other people and get people to throw out their religious faith altogether. Is is that what they're trying to do?

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah, I think there's evidence of that that that is what's happening. There was actually a prominent editorial published uh in the Denver area around the time that the lower courts rendered their decision, which expressly argued that if the Catholic Church wants its schools to be able to participate, then the church should just change their policies and change their beliefs about sexuality. So it's quite clear that there's some type of coalition in Colorado that would like to stamp these types of religious beliefs out of the public sector.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Have they suggested how we should go about editing the most published book on earth and and rewriting it so that it's compliant with that? Do we have to take out all the stuff about Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot and his wife and everything else? And and and a whole lot of chapter and verse has to be removed from the book to make it compliant for the LGBTQ crowd?

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah, and I think the idea is even if those are the things that you know Catholics believe, we don't care. We we'd like to stamp you out anyway. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Well, how soon is uh US Supreme when are they gonna hear oral arguments on this? And will it be decided this year?

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah, the the oral arguments will be sometime in the fall. We don't yet have the precise oral argument date, and then we would expect a decision to come out by at the latest June of 2027.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

June of twenty-seven. So it won't come out before this year's election, but it will be heard in the fall term after the first Monday in October, right? Yeah, or yes, that's right. Do you think do you ever have the feeling, Jordan? I'm talking to Jordan Varberg, by the way, an attorney of the Beckett Fund. Is there any way we can get the Supreme Court to have a little bit more of a work ethic? Because they don't they take they take fewer cases today than they did 30 or 40 years ago, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah, they are taking fewer cases than they have historically. Uh currently, they're you know normally taking anywhere from 50 to 60 cases a year. I think that might reflect that there are just more highly charged cases that are hitting their docket. You know, we're very grateful they granted review in this case. I I think they recognize that the issues presented in this case have really, you know, nationwide importance. And so the court, whenever it sees an issue like that, that's likely to pique the court's interest. And I'm glad that they that they saw the inherent injustice in this case.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

I mean, I understand that for an attorney it's probably not a great idea to say the Supreme Court doesn't work very hard. But as an American citizen, I think I can say they don't work very hard. They don't work nearly as hard as they used to. And the people that they have working with them, the clerks and all the technology that they have for backgrounding and uh what is it, shepherding or whatever it is they do with cases so they can look up all the background. I think they've got better tools, and I think they turn out less finished product than they ever have before. That's Jordan Varberg. Jordan is an attorney with the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty. And I want to see, I want to see every faith have religious liberty in this country. And the fact that I'm not a Catholic does not affect my point of view about whether or not Catholic families should be able to take their kids to a Catholic school, and that that Catholic school will not be punished by the government for not kowtowing to the LGBTQ crowd. Back in a moment. You're listening to the Lars Larson show.