A recent flurry of legal rulings has protected the rights of faith-based organizations to refuse service based on deeply held religious beliefs, leading scholars and advocates to question whether these protections result in discrimination against would-be foster and adoptive parents. 

SPA Assistant Professor David J. Schwegman explores this concern in “Do Faith-Based Foster Care Agencies Respond Equally to All Clients?”, coauthored with Mattie Mackenzie-Liu (Syracuse University) and Leonard M. Lopoo (Syracuse University) as a follow up to their 2019 study, which found that nonprofit foster care providers tended to provide less-helpful information to same-sex inquirers. 

The current article, published this summer in the Journal of Policy Studies, used an email correspondence study to examine whether faith-based adoption and foster care agencies respond to inquiries from white same-sex couples differently than those of their public and secular counterparts. 

The authors sent two email inquiries to every adoption/foster-care agency in the U.S., one with names signaling a same-sex couple and one signaling a heterosexual couple. Analysis of their responses revealed that faith-based providers were over 14 percentage points less likely to respond to same-sex male couples compared to heterosexual couples.

“Nonprofit foster care agencies are more likely to discriminate, at least descriptively, than public foster care agencies,” said Schwegman. “Faith-based organizations operationalize that discrimination by simply not responding.”

The relationships among public and private U.S. adoption and foster-care services are complex: some private, faith-based entities receive public funding or other support, raising questions about the separation of church and state. While Schwegman was quick to point out the significant public good served by faith-based providers, he warned that their discriminatory practices affect both civil society and child welfare.

“Local governments who provide resources to nonprofits need to be very cognizant of how [their biases] can translate into exacerbating disparities within society or undermining their mission,” said Schwegman, “which, in this case, is to provide children with stable, safe homes regardless of the composition of the couple, or whether or not it is a couple.”

Meanwhile, the opioid epidemic has resulted in a surge of children into the foster care system, creating a demand for foster parents that could be eased by supporting the applications of same-sex couples.

“Anything that prevents people from wanting to become foster parents doesn't just adversely impact the person,” he said. “It impacts the child as well.”

Conversely, he continued, any policy change that would remove faith-based agencies’ right of refusal might prompt them to leave the adoption/foster-care market, which would also threaten the well-being of children in the system.

“It’s nuanced,” Schwegman said. “The important takeaway is that this discrimination is happening. These findings are suggestive, and more study is needed.”