Tennessee Court Dismisses Lawsuit From Jewish Couple Rejected By State-Funded Christian Adoption Agency

July 6, 2022 Christianists, Hate Groups

Nashville’s NBC News affiliate reports:

Tennessee judges have dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Knoxville couple who alleged that a state-sponsored Christian adoption agency refused to help them because they are Jewish.

The lawsuit challenged a 2020 state law that installed legal protections for private adoption agencies to reject state-funded placement of children to parents based on religious beliefs.

The challenge by Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram said Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Greeneville barred them from taking state-mandated foster-parent training and denied a home-study certification while they attempted to adopt a child last year.

The Christian Post reports:

A three-judge panel of the Chancery Court in Davidson County ruled 2-1 to grant a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and DCS Commissioner Jenifer Nichols.

The panel majority also ruled that “the Plaintiffs have not shown that the Defendants would not contract with a Jewish agency similarly situated to Holston United Methodist Home for Children; therefore the Act does not single out people of the Jewish faith as a disfavored, innately inferior group.”

Holston CEO Bradley Williams told CP he believes “forcing Holston Home to violate our beliefs and place children in homes that do not share our faith is wrong and contrary to a free society.”

The adoption agency is represented by the anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Alliance Defending Freedom. In 2003, the ADF filed a Supreme Court brief in defense of the criminalization of homosexuality.



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