Supreme Court rules in favor of Christian foster parents

Philadelphia’s exclusion of a Catholic child-placing agency from its foster care program violates the First Amendment, the nation’s highest court said Thursday in a 9-0 ruling. The long-awaited decision upholds the right of Catholic Social Services to abide by its Biblical beliefs about marriage by not placing children with same-sex couples. The city deemed the agency’s policy discriminatory and stopped referring children to it in 2018, cutting off foster parents such as Sharonell Fulton, who had fostered more than 40 children through CSS.

How will the decision affect other foster and adoption organizations? The judge in a similar case in Michigan has been waiting on the Supreme Court to issue its decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The Michigan case will likely swing in favor of foster parents and their agency, St. Vincent Catholic Charities. St. Vincent parent Melissa Buck praised the ruling, saying, “At a time when we are facing a shortage of foster homes, it’s imperative we have all hands on deck to combat this crisis.”

Dig deeper: Listen to Mary Reichard’s analysis of the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the Fulton case on The World and Everything in It podcast.