Religion · Statewide · CO · October 1, 2026
SCOTUS to Hear Colorado Preschool Case on LGBTQ Rights, Religious Freedom
What Alinsky tactic is being used
2 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The petitioners' own question presented turns Colorado's book of rules back on the state: the program is marketed as "universal," yet the cert petition points to exemptions, both categorical and discretionary, that let some preschools limit enrollment to particular groups while Catholic parishes are excluded for applying their own criteria. The whole fight over "general applicability" under Employment Division v. Smith is an argument that the state does not keep the rule it wrote. The Tenth Circuit's answer on September 30, 2025 was that the equal-opportunity requirement admits of no exceptions at all — so the case is squarely about whether the stated rule matches the practiced one.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
The same tactic will be aimed at your institution, and it only works where the gap is real. This month, pull your school's or church's written hiring and enrollment policy and compare it line by line to the last three years of actual decisions — who was hired, who was admitted, who was declined, and on what stated ground. Where practice and paper diverge, bring them together now in writing, and keep the board minute that records it.
Rule 9
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”
The alert itself concedes that "specific parties and legal questions in the case are still emerging," and action item 4 asks boards to plan for an "adverse ruling" whose content nobody yet knows. The dread is doing more work than the facts: what is actually at stake in No. 25-581 is eligibility for a voluntary state preschool funding program worth up to 15 hours a week per four-year-old, argued November 3, 2026 — not the closure of churches or schools.
Counter-Rule 9 · Courageous Realism
Name the worst case out loud and cost it honestly. Fear of the unnamed is doing most of the work.
Name the worst case out loud and price it. At your next board meeting, ask for one page: what share of the institution's revenue comes from any state or federal program, which signed service agreements carry nondiscrimination conditions, and what the budget looks like if that money stops. Then read the two questions the Court actually granted, on the free docket, rather than the commentary about them — and refuse to repeat predictions you cannot source.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
The free 4-minute assessment identifies your mountain and your institution’s capture phase — so alerts like this one arrive matched to where you actually stand.
Facing this yourself? Ask. Describe what is happening and get what the book, Scripture, and the law of your state say, with the exact words to use. Your first one is free.