"Can the Government Deny Foster Parent Applications Due to Religious Beliefs?"

An American Enterprise Institute "Are You Kidding Me?" podcast episode, with Naomi Schaefer Riley, Ian Rowe, and me.

I much enjoyed the conversation, and I hope you will, too. From the AEI summary:

James and Gail Blais were barred from fostering their one-year-old great-granddaughter due to their religious beliefs. During the foster parent application process, the Washington state government led the Blaises through hypothetical questions assessing how they would respond if their great-granddaughter were to identify as homosexual or transgender at some point in the future. As Seventh-Day Adventists, the Blaises said they would certainly continue to love the child, but they could not support the child's decision in that circumstance. This raises an important question: can state governments deny foster applications due to the religious beliefs of potential foster parents?

In this episode, Naomi and Ian are joined by Eugene Volokh, an expert in first amendment law and professor of law at UCLA, to explore how state adoption authorities can ensure the well-being of foster children while respecting the religious beliefs of prospective foster parents. Volokh notes that because the Blaises were applying to care for a relative, and the decision to deny their application was based on responses to hypothetical scenarios, this case signals a particularly concerning overreach by the Washington state government.

Comments

[Hank Ferrous]

That was indeed interesting. I’ve found that permanent government’s functionaries tend to make rather too many decisions as they did in the case with the Blaises. The courts are sometimes there to sort the matter out, depending on the judge.

[floridalegal]

I will give the government bureaucrat the benefit of the doubt and just say that some people are in their own social and culture bubble and “just don’t get religion “. However, I would not be surprised after discovery that there was animus and discrimination based upon religion. The fact that the prospective foster parents were biological grandparents should have been a basis for keeping the child in the family’s extended support network.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

IANAL, but it seems to me the only proper filtering the government can do on accepting foster parents is that which would justify taking kids away from foster or natural or adoptive parents. Are you a pedophile? Do you favor beating and starving kids?

If you can’t remove a kid from natural parents who forbid transitioning while living with the parents, then you can’t forbid fostering for the same reasoning.

[ReaderY]

The Supreme Court has held that foster parents are simply a boarding school, with no constitutional interest in or right to the children, and no parental relationship.

That said, it’s a little odd to apply that point of view to a child’s grandparents. Under Moore v. city of East Cleveland, extended family would appear to have more interest in a child than the stare.

[TwelveInchPianist]

“Under Moore v. city of East Cleveland, extended family would appear to have more interest in a child than the state.”

And extended family would appear to have more interest in a child than the state out from under Moore v. City of East Cleveland.

[EscherEnigma]

IANAL, but it seems to me the only proper filtering the government can do on accepting foster parents is that which would justify taking kids away from foster or natural or adoptive parents.

Seeing as the Catholic Charities are trying to go well beyond that standard in the Philadelphia case, I assume this means that you think the city should win?

[ReaderY]

In the absence of a concrete case, this would appear to be nothing but discrimination based on religious beliefs, which is prohibited by the First Amendment.

This is no different from saying that Catholics or Jews or Muslims cannot hold public office because they would be loyal to the Pope or Israel or the Islamic State in the event of a hypothetical future conflict with the United States.

In the religion as foreign loyalty examples, there may be specific instances in which specific individuals have concrete clashes of loyalties, based on actual behavior in specific contexts. But state officials cannot make blanket statements based on how they believe religious beliefs will play out in hypothetical future conflicts. They can’t simply assume that Catholics or Jews or Muslims will be disloyal to the country should a situation arise some time in the future.

This situation doesn’t seem to be any different.

[EscherEnigma]

What an absurd reading.

They were not denied because they’re some flavor of Christian.

They were denied because they stated their behavior would not be in the best interset of the child. That such behavior is motivated by their religion may be relevant in the final analysis, but blurring the line between “he kicked me out because I was rude to the waitress!” and “he kicked me out because I was rude to the waitress in accordance with my religious beliefs!” is pure sophistry.

[TwelveInchPianist]

“They were denied because they stated their behavior would not be in the best interset of the child.”

They said that they would not support the child’s decision to adopt a particular identity. Do you think that, say, Jewish or atheist parents who say that they would not support their child’s conversion to Christianity should be denied as well?

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