SCOTUS Enters The Realms Of Parental Rights

This is Dana Nessel.

This is about Parental Rights.

Supreme Court to take on LGBTQ foster care case

In this June 26, 2015, file photo, a crowd celebrates outside of the Supreme Court in Washington after the court declared that same-sex couples have a right to marry anywhere in the U.S. On Friday, Aug. 16, 2019, the Justice Department brief filed telling the Supreme Court that federal law allows firing workers for being transgender. The brief is related to a group of three cases that the high court will hear in its upcoming term related to LGBTQ discrimination in the workplace. 

The Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear a case next term involving the city of Philadelphia’s decision to no longer work with foster care agencies that refuse to place children with married, same-sex couples.

Catholic Social Services sued Philadelphia after officials said the Human Services Department no longer would certify foster care agencies that do not comply with the city’s anti-discrimination policy, effectively shutting off public funds to the social services arm of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s city solicitor stood by the decision to end the partnership with Catholic Social Services (CSS) over anti-discrimination violations, which were reported in an investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“Unfortunately, CSS refused to consider qualified same-sex couples to become foster parents — even when these couples would be a safe, loving family for the child — and in doing so, CSS defied the City’s nondiscrimination policy,” City Solicitor Marcel S. Pratt said Monday in a written statement.

Groups advocating for religious liberty for child placement agencies welcomed the high court’s announcement. The archdiocese cheered the decision, having placed children in homes as an extension of its religious ministry since the late 18th century.

“There’s no reason to single out and punish adoption providers who are motivated by their sincerely held religious beliefs that the best home for a child includes a mother and father,” said Keisha Russell, counsel at First Liberty Institute, the law firm representing the plaintiffs. “When the government decides whose faith is or is not acceptable, we all lose.”

The Supreme Court’s announcement comes almost a year after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit unanimously upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by foster parents for CSS, ruling that the city had acted to end discrimination against LGBTQ parents, not out of anti-religious bigotry.

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