Couple sue Tenn. after being denied adoption services because they are Jewish

Feb. 25 (UPI) -- A husband and wife who want to become adoptive parents are suing the Tennessee Department of Children's Services over a state-funded agency's refusal to provide them child-placement services because they are Jewish.

Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram wanted to begin the process of fostering-to-adopt a Florida boy with a disability. But to be eligible to bring him into their home, they were required by Tennessee to first complete a foster parent training program and receive a home study certification to present to the child's home state.

The Rutan-Rams, who live in Knoxville, arranged to get the training and home study from the Holston United Methodist Home for Children, a child-placing agency that receives state money. However, an employee emailed Elizabeth Rutan-Ram on the day in January 2021 that they were to begin training saying that the agency would not serve the couple.

"Unfortunately, as a Christian organization, our executive team made the decision several years ago to only provide adoption services to prospective adoptive families that share our belief system in order to avoid conflicts or delays with future service delivery," the employee, Melissa Russell, said in the email, which was filed as an exhibit along with the suit. "We believe that faith is such an integral part of family life that it is better for families to be served by organizations with whom they share more compatible belief systems."

Under a law passed in 2020 by the Tennessee General Assembly, no private licensed child-placing agency -- which includes organizations that get state funding, as Holston does -- can be required to assist in any foster care or adoption case "when the proposed placement would violate the agency's written religious or moral convictions or policies."

"They're not disputing our allegations at all," said Alex Luchenitser, the associate vice president and associate legal director at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "They're claiming they have a constitutional right to receive government funds and discriminate at the same time."

Lawyers with the Washington, D.C-based Americans United, a nonprofit advocacy organization, and The Kramer Law Center in Memphis are representing the plaintiffs.

"Ms. Rutan-Ram was deeply hurt and shocked when she received Ms. Russell's email," the lawsuit says. "Holston's refusal to serve her felt like a punch in the gut or a slap in the face. Ms. Rutan-Ram did not expect that a state-funded agency would reject a loving family simply because the family did not share the agency's preferred religious beliefs."

According to the suit, the Rutan-Rams were unable to find another agency in their area that was willing to provide them the services they needed and they were not able to foster or adopt the Florida boy.

Free exercise of religion

The Rutan-Rams, who filed their suit on Jan. 19 in Davidson County Chancery Court, are seeking a declaration that the law allowing Holston to decline to assist them violates the religious freedom and equal protection rights under the Tennessee Constitution by permitting state funding of agencies that discriminate against prospective and current foster parents.

The suit, which names the Tennessee Department of Children's Services and Jennifer Nichols, its commissioner, as defendants, also seeks an injunction stopping the department from funding or contracting with Holston "as long as Holston continues to discriminate."

Six other Tennessee residents have joined the Rutan-Rams as plaintiffs in the suit. They are the Rev. Jeannie Alexander, an interfaith pastor; the Rev. Elaine Blanchard, a Disciples of Christ minister; the Rev. Alaina Cobb, a Christian minister; the Rev. Denise Gyauch, a Unitarian Universalist minister; Larry Blanz, a retired psychologist; and Mirabelle Stoedter, treasurer of the Tennessee chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Stoedter identifies as both atheist and Jewish, the suit says.

A three-judge panel has been appointed to hear the case. These special panels are used in civil suits that challenge the constitutionality of a Tennessee law and name as a defendant the state, a state official or a state department or agency.

The communications director for the Department of Children's Services, Rob Johnson, said in an email to UPI that the department is unable to comment on pending litigation.

Bradley Williams, Holston's president, said the agency wants to exercise its faith to care for children who have been hurt and neglected "and do so in the name of Jesus Christ."

"We ask others who share our faith to partner with us as foster and adoptive families in this critically important calling," Williams told UPI in a written statement. "We believe other ministries and religious family service agencies, like the Jewish Children's Adoption Network, should also be free to provide for children in their care according to their faith and religious traditions. That is what the constitutions of the United States and the state of Tennessee require."

Holston, which also receives federal money, filed a lawsuit on Dec. 2 in U.S. District Court in Greeneville, Tenn., challenging a federal regulation that prohibits discrimination on the basis of age, disability, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation in programs funded by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit legal organization based in Scottsdale, Ariz., that represents the agency, says the regulation violates Holston's right to the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech and association under the First Amendment and the right to the free exercise of religion under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

On Wednesday, Michael Farris, the president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, sent an email to supporters asking for donations to help fight the federal regulation. He notes that his organization does not charge clients for its legal services.

"The current move by the Biden administration to eject ministries like Holston Home from the program doesn't just violate their God-given right to religious freedom," the email says. "It also ignores a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the rights of a faith-based foster care agency in Philadelphia to operate according to its convictions."

The court ruled unanimously in June 2021 in Fulton vs. Philadelphia that a Catholic adoption agency had a First Amendment right to refuse to certify same-sex couples as foster parents. The city had refused to contract with Catholic Social Services based on its anti-discrimination rules.

"The city's actions burdened CSS's religious exercise by forcing it either to curtail its mission or to certify same-sex couples as foster parents in violation of its religious beliefs," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

Providing a home

After discovering they could not have biological children of their own, the Rutan-Rams learned of the Florida boy and they initially were told by Holston that it would provide them services, their suit says.

Elizabeth Rutan-Ram told UPI that she and her husband were not told before the training was to begin about any restrictions and filled out the paperwork, which also had no mention of religious requirements.

"It was very, very lengthy," she said of the application. "It was like a book."

The Rutan-Rams, who are both 30 and have been married for five years, did not give up. They have been working with another agency in Tennessee and are fostering a teenage girl, whom they are in the process of adopting. (They no longer needed the special kind of certification for an out-of-state adoption that Holston would have given them.)

In addition, they have taken in about 10 foster children for between one night and a week.

"When they come into custody, there aren't enough homes usually," Elizabeth Rutan-Ram said. "Sometimes it takes them a while to find a permanent foster home for them and until they get that straightened out, they unfortunately bounce around from house to house. We open up our house to temporary fosters and we treat it like a sleepover. We'll go get dinner, get ice cream, try to make it a little calmer and less stressful."

She said the experience with the Department of Children's Services was very discouraging.

"I'm glad that everything's OK right now, but it was hard not knowing if everything would work out," she said.

Gabriel Rutan-Ram said publicity about their suit has led many people to reach out to him and his wife, including strangers.

"The support from the community has just been phenomenal," he said.

Rachel Laser, Americans United's president and CEO, said there are many Christians who are supportive of the rights of Jews to foster children through agencies funded with their own tax dollars. But as long as the new law stands, "even those religion-based child placement agencies that may not be discriminating now would be able to discriminate at their whim," she said.

In addition to Tennessee, 10 other states have similar laws that allow foster care agencies to discriminate on the basis of religion, Laser said. They are Alabama, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia.

In a recent case, Aimee Maddonna, of Simpsonville, S.C., a Catholic mother of three, sued the state and federal governments in 2019 after allegedly being rejected as a prospective foster parent by Miracle Hill Ministries because she is not an evangelical Protestant. The agency receives state and federal money.

And in Texas, Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin, a married same-sex couple, also are suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after allegedly being told by Catholic Charities Fort Worth they could not provide foster care for refugee children on behalf of the federal government because they don't "mirror the holy family."

Both cases are pending.

The way to guarantee religious freedom is to keep religion and government separate, Laser said.

"Too many Americans take religious freedom for granted and assume that church-state separation is something that we established in the 1700s and we don't need to worry about," she said. "But today, the alarm bells should be ringing because so many states and even the federal government under the Trump administration have massively undermined what we all take to be a given. And one day, if we're not careful, we're going to wake up and America won't look like America anymore."