Foster Parents Challenge Vermont Policy Essentially Prohibiting Christians From Adopting

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed their opening brief Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Wuoti v. Winters. ADF attorneys represent two Vermont families who had their foster-care licenses revoked by the state because of their religious beliefs.

Despite a track record of success and high praise from social workers who knew Brian and Katy Wuoti and Bryan and Rebecca Gantt, Vermont’s Department for Children and Families revoked their foster-care licenses after the couples expressed their religiously inspired and widely held belief that girls cannot become boys or vice versa. The state applies this policy categorically—prohibiting families with these views from caring for any child, even if they sought to care for a relative, provide respite care for an infant for just one day, or care for a child who shared their faith.

“Vermont’s foster-care system is in crisis: There aren’t enough families to care for vulnerable kids including many victims of the state’s opioid crisis. Yet Vermont is putting its ideological agenda ahead of the needs of these suffering kids,” said ADF Senior Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse. “The Wuoti and Gantt families have adopted five beautiful children between them, including children with special needs. Now Vermont says they’re unfit to parent any child because of their widely held religious beliefs about human sexuality. We’re urging the 2nd Circuit to protect the constitutional right of citizens caring for suffering children.”

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The state’s foster-care system has more children in need than families willing to care for them, and officials have even had to place some children in institutions and unlicensed placements, including hospitals and police stations, to fill the gap. To help meet this need, the Wuotis became foster parents in 2014 and adopted two brothers from foster care. The Gantts became foster parents in 2016 and focused on caring for children born with drug dependencies or with fetal alcohol syndrome. The Gantts have since adopted three children.

Vermont officials described the couples as “amazing,” “wonderful,” “kind,” and “welcoming.” Yet the state revoked both families’ licenses when they expressed their religious belief that a person should live consistent with their sex and marriage is the union of one man and one woman. According to the state, that made them “unqualified” to parent any child regardless of the child’s age, beliefs, or identity. Vermont will not license these families to provide any type of foster care or even respite care. As the opening brief explains, this exclusion burdens constitutional rights as much as it needlessly deprives children of loving homes.

“In the Green Mountain State, families must be ‘holistically affirming and supporting’ of a child’s sexual identity and gender expression ‘even if the foster parents hold divergent personal opinions or beliefs,’” the brief states. “This requires foster parents to speak words like chosen pronouns and to attend events like pride parades. They must also refrain from exposing children to the view that sex is fixed and cannot be changed. The goal is to suppress ideas and viewpoints with which Vermont disagrees—exactly what the First Amendment prohibits.”

“Every family comes with a unique religious or cultural background, and Vermont concedes it does not force others to ‘compro­mise their own beliefs,’” the brief continues. “Yet on this one issue, Vermont demands uniformity—excluding anyone who holds a different view.”

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