Christian adoption ministries back in crosshairs

A long-serving Christian adoption and foster care ministry in Tennessee is the backdrop for a lawsuit filed against the state last week by a Jewish couple who say the agency turned them away because of their beliefs.

Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram filed the lawsuit in state court last week. They state that they had identified a child in Florida whom they wished to adopt, but they could not do so because Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Greeneville, Tenn., declined to provide them with the home study and training services that Tennessee requires for such adoptions. Holston Home only works with couples who share the organization’s Christian beliefs.

The couple isn’t suing the children’s home; instead, they are targeting the state Department of Children’s Services, which enforces a law protecting the religious freedom of agencies like one in Greeneville.

The Tennessee law, enacted in January 2020, protects child-placement agencies from lawsuits for operating in accordance with their religious beliefs. Opponents of the legislation argue that it violates the establishment clauses of U.S. and Tennessee constitutions by advancing religion. Supporters claim it protects the free exercise of religion by faith-based agencies.

Bradley Williams, the president of Holston Home, pointed to the existence of many other options for families whose beliefs did not align with an agency that seeks to place children exclusively in Christian homes. The Rhutan-Rams claimed they could find no other agencies in their area to assist with their placement other than Holston Home, but the state is likely to dispute that.

“Finding other agencies is not hard to do,” said Williams. “In Tennessee, for example, there are six other agencies for each … faith-based provider.” If forced to choose between operating in accordance with their convictions or shutting their doors, Christian agencies may be forced to close, to the detriment of families and children.

Last week’s lawsuit comes on the heels of Holston Home’s own legal challenge in December to a Biden administration directive that threatens religious adoption agencies. The directive requires recipients of federal foster care funds to place children with foster and adoptive parents without regard to the parents’ sexual orientation or gender identity.

Child-placement agencies remain a legal battleground even after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2021 ruling striking down a Philadelphia nondiscrimination rule as applied to Catholic Social Services.

“Everything Holston Home does is guided by our religious views,” said Williams. “It is vital that Holston Home, as a religious organization, remains free to continue placing at-risk children in loving, Christian families, according to our deeply held beliefs.”

In a similar case, a Catholic woman sued the state of South Carolina over its funding and licensure of Miracle Hill Ministries, a foster agency that declined to allow her to volunteer or foster when she refused to sign the organization’s statement of faith. The action was dismissed in November 2019, but Aimee Maddonna refiled her lawsuit the following month, this time against the federal government, over the Trump administration’s waiver of a nondiscrimination rule applicable to Miracle Hill. That lawsuit is pending.