Following lawsuits and a veiled threat about federal funding from the Trump administration, Massachusetts officials recently deleted rules requiring potential foster parents to support and respect a child’s gender identity and sexual orientation.
The state Department of Children and Families cut the requirement Friday from its own regulations. The state now requires foster parents to generally support a child’s “individual identity and needs,” according to the new version of the regulations.
“The Department of Children and Families’ top priority is providing a safe and supportive home for all children in foster care,” Commissioner Staverne Miller told GBH News in a statement. “We are also committed to ensuring that no one is prevented from applying or reapplying to be a foster parent because of their religious beliefs.”
The decision comes as people in Massachusetts and across the country debate whether foster families must agree to support LGBTQ+ foster children, an issue currently being fought in federal offices and the courts in multiple states.
Advocates from both sides of the issue told GBH News they hope the change will put the legal question to rest and bring focus back to the care for thousands of children and youth in foster care in Massachusetts. LGBTQ+ advocates pointed out that the department can still use its discretion for where to place children — for instance, putting LGBTQ+ children with families who say they would be supportive of their identities.
“I have been troubled all along by the litigation and by what I see as really a deflection away — of our state resources, of our focus — on where they should be, which is on children and families,” said Polly Crozier, the director of family advocacy at the Boston-based LGBTQ+ civil rights organization GLAD Law. “Nothing about the change distracts from the fact that the state remains responsible for the safety and well being of every child in this care — and that includes LGBTQ children.”
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The issue came to the front earlier this year when current and prospective foster parents sued the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. They alleged their First Amendment rights were violated when they were denied the ability to foster children, or were told they would be denied, over their religious beliefs about gender identity and sexual orientation.
One of the parents, Audrey Jones, told an employee with the Department of Children and Families that she and her husband couldn’t “support a child dating someone of the same sex or affirm a child who wanted to use different pronouns.”
The Trump administration opened an investigation into the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, urging the agency to change its policy. A September letter from the Administration for Children and Families said the policy was in “direct violation” of religious freedoms protected under the First Amendment.
“I am saddened to see that this policy has already discriminated against loving, qualified parents,” wrote then-acting assistant secretary Andrew Gradison, referring to Audrey Jones and her husband Nick. “As you know, I have the responsibility of monitoring how federal funds are used and ensuring that federal law is upheld.”
The letter was followed by a November executive order from President Donald Trump. It directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to “take appropriate action to address State and local policies and practices that inappropriately prohibit participation in federally-funded child-welfare programs by qualified individuals or organizations based upon their sincerely-held religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
Officials with the Administration for Children and Families did not respond to a GBH News request for comment.
Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse is an attorney representing the couples with the conservative First Amendment-focused legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom based out of Arizona. He says the new policy change gave him and his clients hope, and expects that the families who sued the state should now be able to get their foster licenses.
“This amendment is a step in the right direction,” Widmalm-Delphonse told GBH News in an interview Wednesday. “This lawsuit is going to continue until we’re sure that, one, our clients aren’t unfairly excluded from the foster care system, and two, Massachusetts respects religious liberty in its state.”
He hopes other states look to Massachusetts and change their own policies.
LGBTQ+ advocates are now focused on another part of the foster care process: kids’ placement with specific families. The Department of Children and Families still has discretion about what parents are a good fit for the children in their care.
“Nothing about the change distracts from the fact that the state remains responsible for the safety and well-being of every child in its care — and that includes LGBTQ children,” said Crozier of GLAD Law.
Shaplaie Brooks, the executive director of Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth, pointed to estimates that one-third of youth in foster care across the country are LGBTQ+.
“The Commonwealth maintains oversight and the flexibility to place children where they are safe and supported,” Brooks wrote in an email to GBH News. “Every foster parent — no matter who they are — must respect the child in their temporary care, must abide by the laws of the Commonwealth and the policies of DCF and must ensure they cause children no harm.”
