A South Carolina foster agency which receives federal funding is seeking permission to deny foster opportunities to non-Protestants.
The case centers around a South Carolina Christian organization, Miracle Hill Ministries, which claims that under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), they are not obligated to place children with non-Protestant Christian foster families.
Miracle Hill receives federal funds to pair children with foster families, while specifically recruiting Christian families. In practice, this means that they’ve frequently refused to place foster children with non-Protestant, non-Christian families. Several Jewish families, the Intercept’s Akela Lacy reports, have been explicitly told that they were rejected on the basis of their faith.
This request should not even require discussion; it ought to be rejected at once.
Imagine, analogously, that an agency operated by Muslims refused to place foster children with a family in which the women had driver’s licenses? Or a fundamentalist Baptist agency refused to place children in black families? Would anybody think such an agency should receive public money and be allowed to discriminate?
The agency in question receives public money — and should not be allowed to serve only members of their ridiculous club. If they are, it puts Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists, gays, on and on, in the position of subsidizing discrimination against themselves. Unfortunately, Constitutional niceties are ignored in the age of Trump. The best we can hope for is that a conscientious public servant slow-walks the request until after the midterms, Trump is grievously humiliated, and the pros are at last free to do their jobs properly and ignore pious nutjobs.