Tag Archives: Foster care

U.S. Supreme Court backs Catholic group that shunned gay foster parents

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court embraced religious rights over LGBT rights on Thursday by ruling in favor of a Catholic Church-affiliated agency that sued after Philadelphia refused to place children for foster care with the organization because it barred same-sex couples from applying to become foster parents.

The 9-0 ruling, written by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, was a victory for Catholic Social Services (CSS), part of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and represented the latest instance of the Supreme Court taking an expansive view of religious rights under the U.S. Constitution.

The justices decided that Philadelphia’s refusal to use Catholic Social Services for foster care services unless it agreed to certify same-sex couples as foster parents violated the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion.

Catholic Social Services argued that Philadelphia had penalized it for its religious views and for following church teachings on marriage.

In the ruling, Roberts wrote, “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.”

Conservative and religious advocacy rights groups cheered the decision – and the fact that the court’s three liberal members joined the six conservative justices – saying it will have a major impact on future legal disputes involving religious beliefs.

“This is a strong ruling in favor of religious freedom, especially for social services providers,” said Lori Windham, a lawyer for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the agency and three foster parents in the case. “The court recognized that it is not the government’s place to exclude religious agencies because of their religious beliefs.”

“I am grateful that we can finally rest knowing that the agency that has brought my family together can continue to do the same for other families,” said Toni Lynn Simms-Bush, who has served as a foster parent through Catholic Social Services and was one of the plaintiffs.

‘SELECTIVE ASSESSMENT’

The justices decided that foster care certification provided by Catholic Social Services did not fall under the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance because it is a service not “readily available” to the public.

“It involves a customized and selective assessment that bears little resemblance to staying in a hotel, eating at a restaurant or riding a bus,” Roberts wrote.

The Supreme Court declined to take even-broader action in the form of overruling its 1990 precedent that upheld “generally applicable” laws even if they curb religious freedom. Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch said the court should have overruled that precedent.

LGBT and other liberal advocacy groups called the ruling troubling but said they were relieved it did not go further.

“Foster care is a government function, and all governments have a compelling interest in ensuring their contract agencies, including faith-based ones, treat all children and families equally. And today’s ruling does mean, at least for now, that different-sex married couples have access to all city agencies, while same-sex couples do not,” M. Currey Cook of the Lambda Legal pro-LGBT rights group said.

Catholic Social Services, which has helped provide foster care services for more than a century, had said it would be compelled to close its foster care operations if it was barred from Philadelphia’s program.

Philadelphia in 2018 suspended foster care referrals to Catholic Social Services after a newspaper report about the organization’s policy against same-sex couples as foster parents, leading the agency to file suit. Catholic Social Services said Philadelphia’s action meant that available foster homes were sitting empty amid a foster care crisis in the city of about 1.5 million people.

The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019 ruled against Catholic Social Services, saying it had not shown that the city had treated it differently because of its religious affiliation. U.S. District Judge Petrese Tucker in 2018 also ruled against the organization.

Eleven of the 50 states currently allow private agencies to refuse to place children with same-sex couples, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a group backing gay rights.

The Supreme Court in recent years has sent mixed messages on the conflict between LGBT and religious rights.

It backed gay rights in a series of landmark rulings including a 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide and a 2020 ruling that a federal law barring workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees.

It also bolstered religious rights in several decisions including a 2014 ruling that let owners of businesses raise religious objections against the government.

No same-sex couple ever sought certification as a foster parent from Catholic Social Services. In addition to same-sex couples, it also will not certify unmarried couples as foster parents, but does not object to certifying individual gay people.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Japan revamps child welfare, tens of thousands still institutionalized

Children are seen through a window as they play at Futaba Baby Home in Tokyo

By Chang-Ran Kim

TOKYO (Reuters) – A baby lies in a metal-bar cot drinking from a bottle perched on his pillow in a Tokyo orphanage. There’s no one to hold and feed him or offer words of comfort.

The director of the institution, nurses scurrying busily around him, says he would like extra time and staff to pay more attention to the 70 babies and toddlers under his care, but it’s not going to happen.

“I wish we could hold them in our arms, one by one,” says Yoshio Imada. “Some people call this abuse. It’s a difficult situation.”

Japan last month passed a bill overhauling its 70-year-old Child Welfare Law, recognizing a child’s right to grow up in a family setting. It is short on specific, immediate measures, but experts say it’s a first step to making institutions a last resort, rather than the default position.

A staggering 85 percent of the 40,000 children who can’t live with their parents in Japan are institutionalized, by far the highest ratio among rich countries and prompting repeated warnings from the United Nations. Even with the revised law, Japan’s goal isn’t lofty: family-based care for a third of those children by 2029.

The statistics raise the question: where can foster parents be found for tens of thousands of children in need?

“We do the best we can but it’s obvious that a one-on-one relationship that foster parents provide is better,” says Kazumitsu Tsuru, who heads another infant institution in Tokyo.

“All children need someone who is dedicated only to them.”

A major hindrance is a lack of awareness about the fostering system – there are just 10,200 registered foster families, while adoptions are even rarer, at 544 last year. And in a society that treasures uniformity and blood ties, fostered or adopted children are often stigmatized.

A rise in reports of child abuse has also proved a stumbling block. Welfare workers are too busy taking children out of immediate harm. Placing them in institutions is faster than finding a foster family.

Too busy with the next victim, welfare workers also have little time to follow up with those children, leaving them to languish for years.

STARVED OF ATTENTION

One foster mother knows all too well how harmful institutionalization can be.

Now 16, her foster son lulls himself to sleep by pounding his head against his pillow for several minutes. It’s a habit he picked up as an attention-starved child growing up in institutions until he turned six. He is a charming boy, his foster mother says, but erratic.

“When I call him out on something he does wrong, he lashes out at me as if he can do whatever he wants,” she says.

“He’ll do hateful things and at other times he’ll say, ‘Mummy, I love you,’ in a childish voice that’s not normal for a teenage boy. The emotional ups-and-downs wear you out.”

Another mother describes a child she took in from an institution at age five, just when he was beginning to realize he had no family. He flew into fits of rage at school and was afraid to leave the house. Needing to test his new family’s affection, he would ask: “Mummy, what would you do if I died?” At other times, he would beg to be fed milk out of a bottle in his foster mother’s lap.

The warehousing of Japan’s most vulnerable highlights the paradox in a country struggling with a stalled birthrate and ballooning social welfare costs as the population ages. Experts say institutionalization costs three times as much as fostering, and that Japan’s tight job market would be better-served by shifting those caregivers to daycare services to allow more women to work.

“I think the role of infant institutions will change,” says Tsuru, adding that, as the primary caregivers, institutions like his could help find babies a match in a foster or adoptive home.

“None of us wants to see a child stay longer here than they need to be.”

(Editing by Nick Macfie)