S Carolina Foster Agency Allowed to Deny LGBTQ, Non-Christian Families

A South Carolina foster care agency has been given the freedom to discriminate against LGBTQ people and non-Christians, while still receiving federal money to operate.

Miracle Hill Ministries is one of nearly a dozen foster care placement groups in South Carolina with religious affiliations, but it’s the only one that requires all of its workers, mentors, and foster parents to be Christian. Prospective foster parents are required to share testimonies of their faith prior to being considered for taking in children.

This behavior violates an Obama administration regulation prohibiting groups that receive money from the Department of Health and Human Services from discriminating on the basis of religion. The violation was reported about a year ago, and Miracle Hills was given a year to correct it.

Instead, the governor asked for a waiver, so that the group could continue to receive federal money for a discriminatory program.

And on Wednesday, the new administration granted it.

Steven Wagner, a Trump-appointed official at HHS, claimed that asking Miracle Hill to accept non-Christian foster parents would be a substantial burden on its exercise of religion.

“It is despicable that this administration would authorize federally-funded state child welfare agencies to allow caring, qualified families to be turned away because they don’t pass a religious litmus test,” Leslie Cooper, a lawyer with the ACLU. “Prospective foster and adoptive parents should be judged only on their capacity to provide love and support to a child — not their faith.”

The waiver could set a dangerous precedent, as many foster and adoption agencies across the country do have religious affiliations, and could request similar provisions to discriminate against prospective caretakers who don’t believe or live by the religious rules the agency prefers.

And with hundreds of thousands of children in foster care in the U.S. at any given time, discrimination against otherwise qualified non-Christian or LGBTQ families really just hurts the kids.