Supreme Court Revisits Religious School Funding

The Supreme Court is reconsidering whether states can exclude religious schools from publicly funded pre-K programs — and the ripple effects could touch how courts handle religion-adjacent Second Amendment claims.

State of play: The Court has relisted a cert petition challenging a state's exclusion of religious institutions from its universal pre-K funding scheme. Relisting typically signals the justices are taking a serious look, sometimes drafting a dissent from denial or preparing to grant.

Catch up quick:

• Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002) upheld school vouchers reaching religious schools under the Establishment Clause.
• Espinoza v. Montana (2020) held states couldn't bar religious schools from otherwise-neutral scholarship programs.
• Carson v. Makin (2022) extended that logic: Maine couldn't exclude religious schools from its tuition assistance program.
• This new case asks whether direct government funding of pre-K at religious sites crosses a line those prior cases left open.

The legal question: At its core, the Court is being asked how far the Free Exercise Clause requires government to include religious institutions in neutral public benefit programs — and where the Establishment Clause says stop. That boundary question is one the Roberts Court has been walking carefully for a decade.

The intrigue: This doesn't look like a gun case. It isn't. But the doctrinal scaffolding being built here — specifically, whether government neutrality toward religion is constitutionally required or merely permitted — runs parallel to arguments gun-rights litigants are making about selective enforcement and discriminatory licensing schemes. Courts that expand Free Exercise neutrality requirements tend to be the same courts receptive to Bruen's historical-tradition framework. The jurisprudential current flows in one direction.

What to watch: Whether the Court grants cert, and which justices signal interest. A grant before the end of the current term would put oral argument in fall 2025, with a decision by June 2026. Watch also for any concurrences in future religion cases that cite Bruen methodology — that cross-pollination has already started in lower courts.

The bottom line: Gun owners have a stake in a Supreme Court that takes enumerated rights seriously across the board. When the Court strengthens the floor under religious liberty, it tends to strengthen the floor under the Second Amendment too.