The Supreme Court of the United States has delivered a blow to LGBTQ foster parents and families in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who hoped to become foster parents through the charity Catholic Social Services.
SCOTUS has ruled that the agency has the right to continue to refuse to consider LGBTQ individuals, couples, and families as potential foster parents through its organization. As NPR put it, the decision implies that anti-discrimination laws in the US aren't as important as religious freedom laws.
The decision also affirms the apparent opinion of the majority-conservative Supreme Court that being able to freely exercise religious choices and beliefs will be more important than ensuring basic rights for other groups of people.
The decision also comes at a particularly troubling time for foster care in the US. According to nonprofit Children's Rights, on any day in the US, there are over 400,000 children in foster care. In 2019 alone, more than 600,000 children in the US spent time in foster care.
In fact, the entire system of foster care in the US is entering a crisis phase. There are more children than ever before entering the system, but there are fewer families willing to take in foster children due to the ongoing health crisis, coupled with job insecurity.
That makes this organization's insistence on discrimination particularly troubling. If there are stable, loving families that want to foster children, it's difficult to understand why those families will not be allowed to be foster parents simply because they are LGBTQ individuals, couples, or families.
Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the organization does not want to impose its beliefs on anyone else, but that might not hold a lot of water with many people. "CSS seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else."
There are somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000 children in the foster care system in Pennsylvania. That's 13,000 to 15,000 children who need homes. There are roughly 5,000 children in foster care in Philadelphia. Catholic Services still receives millions of dollars a year from the city to support its various programs that provide foster care and/or foster care assistance, such as group homes.
