Appeals Court Blocks Adoption Requirement of Supporting Children’s Sexual Orientation

A federal appeals court on July 24 ruled 2–1 against Oregon’s requirement that prospective adoptive parents support the “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” of children they are seeking to adopt.

“A state’s general conception of the child’s best interest does not create a force field against the valid operation of other constitutional rights,” such as the free exercise of religion and speech, Circuit Judge Daniel Bress wrote for the majority of a split U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit panel.

Jessica Bates, a Christian mother of five, whose husband died in 2017, was compelled to adopt after hearing a religious broadcast, according to her lawsuit. She wanted to adopt a pair of siblings younger than age 10 and opted to pursue domestic adoption.

The process was going well until the instructor in a required adoption training class explained to attendees that they had to “respect, accept, and support” the sexual orientation and “gender identity” of any children they wanted to adopt, per state regulations.

That included using whichever pronoun the child wanted used and affirming a child’s gender identity, even if it did not align with his or her sex.

Bates believes that men cannot become women, that women cannot become men, and that people should not go by pronouns that do not match their sex, according to the complaint.

Under the rules, she would be forced to act in conflict with her religious beliefs, and to not share those beliefs with adopted children, her lawyers said.

After Bates told an adoption worker about her issues with the requirement, the worker said Bates could not adopt if she was not willing to comply.

District Judge Adrienne Nelson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in 2023 ruled against Bates. Nelson said the requirement was neutral because it made no reference to specific religious practices and did not “implicate religion on its face.”

The judge said not complying with the requirement “imposes collateral harm on the child’s development, safety, and physical well-being” and that Oregon had a compelling interest in protecting youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender from harm.

The circuit court panel majority reversed the decision, finding that the requirement likely infringed on Bates’s First Amendment rights, or the right to speak and live according to her conscience and religion.

This was, in part, because Oregon officials did not show that a less strict requirement could achieve the same purpose of protecting children who identify as lesbian, gay, or transgender.

“It is not narrowly tailored to impose on Bates an extreme and blanket rule that she may adopt no child at all based on her religious faith, for fear of hypothetical harms to a hypothetical child,” Bress said.

Circuit Judge Richard R. Clifton dissented, writing that the requirements do not violate the Constitution.

“The only limitation imposed by the state in declining to approve her application to foster a child concerns her treatment of the child, not what she personally believes, how she speaks to the world, or how she practices her faith,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Justice told The Epoch Times via email, “We are disappointed in the ruling but are reviewing to determine next steps.”

Jonathan Scruggs, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, which is helping represent Bates, said in a statement that the appeals court “was right to remind Oregon that the foster and adoption system is supposed to serve the best interests of children, not the state’s ideological crusade.”