A number of Catholic groups including the Catholic League, Ignatius Press, and the Pacific Justice Institute are asking the Supreme Court to review an outlandish and anti-Catholic decision by the always controversial Ninth Circuit.

According to a PJI release:

This brief asks the Supreme Court to review a recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which approved actions by the University of California system that effectively prevent private Christian, Catholic, and Jewish high schools from teaching courses in accordance with their faith traditions.

In essence, the UC system has declared that students from religious high schools will have difficulty being admitted to UC schools because those students will not be given credit for key courses such as biology, history, and literature when those courses are taught from a religious perspective.

UC officials stated in the lower courts that they considered religious perspectives – such as the role of divine providence in history – too narrow – minded. As a result, students from religious schools may be required to post higher test scores than their public school counterparts in order to be admitted to one of the ten UC schools, which include UC Berkeley and UCLA.

My first reaction was wondering if Catholic schools actually taught Catholicism anymore. But then I put away my cynicism and saw that besides being blatant discrimination that could be widely abused, this decision could have a two pronged effect. One -it would make it very difficult for parents to choose a Catholic school education because if parents know that sending their child to Catholic school makes it more difficult for them to attend a college what parent is going to put their children in Catholic schools? Two – This decision could force Catholic schools to secularize.

For militant secularists, this decision has the benefit of likely destroying the Catholic school system in California. Let’s hope that the Supreme Court hears this case. You know, I hear there’s lot of Catholics there.

Note: I first saw this story linked on Pewsitter. They do a great job at aggregating news stories important to Catholics.