Called to serve

On any given day, nearly 400,000 children are living in some form of foster care in the United States. This creates a desperate need for altruistic individuals to open their homes and hearts to care for children in foster care. But despite this need, some states attempt to completely cut out a large group of would-be foster and adoptive parents from serving in this role based solely on the parents’ religious beliefs.

Several states effectively prohibit Christian families from fostering or adopting by requiring potential foster parents to agree to affirm a child’s gender identity, regardless of the child’s biological sex, even in direct contradiction of that family’s sincerely held religious beliefs.

In Vermont, where the state has more children in need than families willing to care for them, two families had their foster care licenses revoked because of their religious beliefs regarding gender. In response, they filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s licensing scheme as unconstitutional.

California has already passed a law that conditions becoming a foster parent on the applicant’s willingness to affirm a foster child’s chosen gender identity or sexual orientation. Not only is this practice discriminatory, but it is also not in the best interest of children living in foster care, as it severely cuts off a large number of open foster homes.

According to Barna Research, practicing Christians are twice as likely to foster or adopt than the general population. They are also more likely to welcome sibling groups, older youth, and children with special needs.

My parents are the perfect example. While I was growing up in Arkansas, and even before I was born, my parents opened their home to foster children. Over the years, they welcomed over 300 children into their home, tending to their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. My parents are devout Christians and saw it as an extension of their Christian faith to care for children in foster care, especially those with special needs. Several of these children even became my brothers and sisters through adoption.

Arkansas is one of the most recent states to enact legislation that protects the ability of religious families to foster and adopt children. The new law also protects faith-based placement agencies from religious discrimination. Kansas has recently enacted a similar law. States like Arkansas and Kansas rightly understand the important role that faith-based families and agencies play in their child welfare systems.

Not only are states like Arkansas and Kansas enacting good public policy, they are also taking note from recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the topic. In 2021, the Supreme Court decided Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. There, the court held that the refusal of Philadelphia to contract with a Catholic foster care agency unless they agreed to certify same-sex couples as foster parents violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

The court has also made it abundantly clear that the government cannot exclude religious people or organizations from governmental programs. For example, in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, the court said that Missouri could not exclude a religious preschool from a competitive grant program that provided rubber playground surfaces. And in Carson v. Makin, the court held that Maine’s refusal to allow parents to use its tuition assistance program to send their children to a religious school violated the Free Exercise Clause.

In the Vermont case, my firm, First Liberty Institute, filed a friend of the court brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit arguing that the state cannot exclude families simply because of their religious beliefs. The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that the government cannot treat religious exercise on less favorable footing. But that is exactly what Vermont is doing through its foster parenting licensing scheme.

Despite the Supreme Court’s clear message, states like Vermont and California still insist on excluding people of faith from becoming foster or adoptive parents. And foster children are paying the ultimate cost. By prohibiting Christians and other families of faith from fostering or adopting children, many children will go through foster care—and in some instances, their entire youth—without a caring and loving home. That is the real price of this type of discrimination. States must ensure that religious families can become foster and adoptive parents—the health of our child welfare system depends on it.