Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation June 15 that protects faith-based foster and adoption care agencies from lawsuits challenging their Biblically based operational standards. Facing the threat of ruinous lawsuits for refusing to work with gay couples or provide abortions for children in their care, agency directors said they would have been forced to close their doors without the protections.

Similar legislation in other states has met with mixed success.

In Texas, faith-based organizations make up about 25 percent of foster and adoption care agencies, serving about 30,000 children in the state’s Child Welfare Services system. Without those agencies, the state’s already shallow pool of prospective foster care and adoptive parents would continue to evaporate, said state Rep. James Frank, a Republican.

Frank, who with his wife has four biological sons and two adopted brothers, authored key legislation this session overhauling the embattled child welfare system. Part of that reform included protections that kept all agencies “at the table,” Frank said.

Catholic Charities and Buckner Children and Family Services, both operating in Texas, asked lawmakers for a reprieve from anticipated lawsuits brought by pro-abortion and LGBT-rights advocates. Attorneys for the opposing organizations lobbied against the bill, calling it discriminatory and alleging gay, lesbian and transgender parents would be shut out of the system—an accusation none of the critics could substantiate.

The State of Texas has never barred gays and lesbians from fostering and adopting. As private agencies—secular and religious—took over the role of recruiting and training prospective parents, some established their own policies that excluded homosexuals. Most agencies today, even some with religious roots, have no such restrictions. But a biblically faithful remnant choose to work exclusively with married heterosexual couples and ask not to be forced to participate in abortions.

The new law protects those agencies but requires any prospective parent turned away for religious reasons be referred to another agency within the region.

Public prayer on trial … again

The U.S. Supreme Court could again be asked to decide the constitutionality of opening government meetings with an invocation. Rulings by the high court in 1983 and 2014 affirm the practice, according to attorneys with First Liberty who are defending two government agencies in two states.

In a rare move, the entire 15-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals assembled June 14 to rehear Bormuth v. County of Jackson, in which plaintiff Peter Bormuth sued to prevent Michigan’s Jackson County Board of Commissioners from starting its monthly meetings with prayer. In February, a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit ruled 2-1 in Bormuth’s favor, overturning a district judge’s decision.

In a written dissent as long as the majority opinion, Judge Richard Griffin said the invocation “was consistent with the Supreme Court’s legislative prayer jurisprudence.” Griffin cited the 4th Circuit, which last year followed the high court’s precedent and ruled in favor of North Carolina commissioners in a very similar case, Lund v. Rowan County.

The two appellate courts recently issued conflicting opinions in similar cases. Barring a reversal of the 6th Circuit’s three-judge panel, the contrary rulings make one of the two cases ripe for a Supreme Court review.

Harvard’s First Amendment hiatus

In a 2005 speech, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers asked: Does research indicate boys are intrinsically more adept at math and science studies than girls?

That question cost Summers his job. And in 2007, Drew Faust replaced him as Harvard’s first female president—a role she announced June 14 she would be leaving next June. But unless speech and association codes implemented under her tenure are rescinded, Faust’s critics said she will leave the school as free from First Amendment liberties as she found it.

Lauded for righting a financially sinking ship and creating a more “diverse” campus, Faust continued to suppress First Amendment freedoms throughout her tenure, wrote critics from Freedom for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

During Faust’s tenure, FIRE repeatedly ranked Harvard as one of the “worst schools for free speech.”

In her May commencement speech, Faust championed free speech for all, giving her critics a spark of hope. But, days later, the president rescinded admission offers for 10 students who shared offensive jokes on a private social media feed.

Among a list of violations, FIRE cited Faust’s most egregious: The creation of a “blacklist policy” which, beginning this fall, will place sanctions on members of any independent single-sex sororities, fraternities, and social clubs. The organizations have no school affiliation but their members will be barred from seeking leadership positions on campus and post-graduate programs like the Rhodes Scholarship.

“The sanctions would effectively end freedom of association at Harvard,” wrote FIRE’s Robert Shibley and Ryne Weiss. “It is FIRE’s hope that the blacklist policy will be abandoned before President Faust’s departure. If not, we hope that President Faust’s successor will commit to ending the illiberal sanctions.”