Bill would let child welfare agencies reject some families, citing sincere religious beliefs
Private child welfare agencies in Kentucky could refuse to serve certain categories of people if doing do “conflicts with their sincerely held religious beliefs,” under a bill sponsored by several Republican lawmakers.
House Bill 524, filed Feb. 11, would create a “rights of conscience” shield for the dozens of child placement and child care agencies that are licensed and funded by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, many of them affiliated with various churches.
Under the bill, the agencies could withhold adoption, foster care, residential care, counseling and related family services from adults or children, and the state could take no action against them as a result.
The lead sponsor, state Rep. Ken Upchurch, R-Monticello, did not respond to requests for explanation of his bill.
However, the bill is similar to others seen nationwide in recent years, prompting legal challenges from civil rights groups that call such measures discriminatory against same-sex couples, single parents and others.
In 2019, the Trump administration gave permission, through a federal waiver, for a publicly funded Protestant foster care agency in South Carolina to reject Jewish, Muslim and Catholic parents who wanted to foster children in its network.
Kentucky’s new House bill is likely a response to fairness ordinances that some local governments are enacting around the state that could be used to guarantee same-sex couples certain rights even if a child welfare agency morally opposes such a family arrangement, said Richard Nelson, founder of the Commonwealth Policy Center.
“I don’t know that we’ve seen that here in Kentucky yet. But this could be a preemptive effort to help religiously affiliated child placement agencies to maintain their moral convictions, their religious values, if there is a conflict in the law that comes up,” Nelson said.
There are roughly 9,100 Kentucky children in some form of state-licensed out-of-home care, such as a foster home or residential facility. On average, they’ve spent nearly one-third of their lives in out-of-home care.
There is no statewide fairness law in Kentucky. But in 2013, state officials settled a civil rights lawsuit by prohibiting any child welfare agencies that contract with the state from discriminating against children based on their religious views or pressuring the children in their care to participate in religious worship or instruction.
That lawsuit involved Sunrise Children’s Services, which is affiliated with the Kentucky Baptist Convention.
The ACLU of Kentucky, which helped pursue the 2013 settlement, said it opposes the new House bill.
“Our commonwealth has one of the highest rates in the nation of children living in the custody of someone other than their parents. It would be shocking if the General Assembly were to move to restrict children from being placed in loving, safe homes when there is such an urgent need,” said ACLU spokeswoman Angela Cooper.
Language in the House bill states that people turned away from one child welfare agency because their status somehow conflicts with the agency’s religious beliefs could go to another agency instead.
“Because state and private entities provide child-placing services through many agencies and facilities, each with varying religious beliefs or no religious beliefs, any religiously compelled inability of a faith-based or religiously affiliated child placing agency to provide child placement will not prevent any individual from alternative equal access to child placing services,” the bill states.
“There is no compelling reason to require a child-placing agency to violate its sincerely held religious beliefs in providing any service, because alternative access to child placing services is equally and readily available,” the bill states.
Another “rights of conscience bill” was approved Feb. 11 by the Senate Judiciary Committee. That measure, Senate Bill 83, would let medical professionals in Kentucky refuse to perform procedures that violate their religious or moral beliefs.
This story was originally published February 22, 2021 at 1:40 PM.
