Nearly 118,000 children are awaiting adoption in the United States, and yet some religious conservatives are insisting that they have a right to put their own religious beliefs ahead of the best interests of children in the state’s care. This issue is being debated from the halls of Congress to state legislatures to courtrooms across the country. But last Friday, a federal court in Philadelphia said there is no such right. 

In a first-of-its-kind ruling, U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker ruled that Catholic Social Services does not have the right to take taxpayer funds and still override the accepted child welfare placement standards because of its religious objections. As the court said, “[Department of Human Services] and Philadelphia have a legitimate interest in ensuring that when they employ contractors to provide governmental services, the services are accessible to all Philadelphians who are qualified for the services.” 

When the government removes children from their families because of abuse or neglect, it often hires private agencies to find foster or adoptive homes for the children. Increasingly, some religiously affiliated child placement agencies, like Catholic Social Services, are asserting a right to put the agencies’ own religious beliefs ahead of the best interests of the children when deciding where to place the kids. What’s behind this controversy is simple: The agencies don’t want to place children with married same-sex couples, people with different faiths, or others who fail a religious litmus test, even when that placement is clearly in the best interest of the children. 

The disputes are the latest battleground in the ongoing effort by some religious conservatives to license discrimination in the name of religion. These religious exemptions are a core strategy for undermining LGBT equality in many contexts, which have grave consequences for LGBT people and others when accessing health care, obtaining government services, going to stores and businesses, and more. In the child welfare arena, discrimination towards LGBT people also has serious consequences for children who need placement in a loving home. 

When the city of Philadelphia found out that the Catholic Social Services agency was refusing to comply with the city’s nondiscrimination requirement, it stopped giving that agency responsibility for placing children. Catholic Social Services sued, arguing that it has a constitutional right to deny children good families based on religious objections to those families.

Judge Tucker disagreed, ruling that Philadelphia has an interest in licensing all qualified parents. Additionally, the  court remarked that: “DHS and Philadelphia have an interest in avoiding likely Equal Protection Clause and Establishment Clause claims that would result if it allowed its government contractors to avoid compliance with the all-comers, nondiscrimination provisions of the Fair Practices Ordinance by discriminating against same-sex married couples.” The decision cited a 1964 Supreme Court decision in which the court recognized that “discrimination is not simply dollars and cents, hamburgers and movies; it is  the  humiliation,  frustration,  and  embarrassment  that  a  person  must  surely  feel  when  he  is  told  that  he  is  unacceptable  as  a  member  of  the  public because of his race or color.”

The ACLU has asked the court to allow the Support Center for Child Advocates, a nonprofit that represents and advocates for children in the foster care system, and Philadelphia Family Pride, a nonprofit LGBTQ organization whose members include same-sex foster parents and prospective foster parents, to be heard should the case move forward. This decision surely won’t be the last from a court on the subject. 

A similar dispute is pending in Michigan. There, some child placement agencies assert that state law authorizes them to discriminate against any prospective foster or adoptive parent to whom the agency has an objection. Two placement agencies turned away Kristy and Dana Dumont, who were seeking to adopt a child in foster care, asserting a religious objection to placing children with same-sex couples. The Dumonts sued, and last week, a federal trial court in Detroit heard oral arguments on the state’s motion to dismiss this case. A decision is expected soon. 

Meanwhile, Congress has also taken up the issue, adding a provision to a Health and Human Services appropriations bill that would license discrimination by child placement agencies and override state laws that bar discrimination and protect children’s welfare. 

Some will say that not much is at stake here and that we should allow a little room for religious freedom.  This fight, however, isn’t about religious freedom — it’s about finding the best placements for kids in need. When the state removes children from their families, the placement decision should be focused entirely on what’s in the best interests of the children. Agencies hired by the state have should not be able to override what’s best for the kids.

We have already balanced religious freedom and civil rights in America. Overbroad religious exemptions harm kids, LGBT people, women, people of minority faiths, and many others in our society. Friday’s ruling gives us one more court decision recognizing those harms and standing against discrimination.

Now it is time for states and Congress to do the same.

Four years ago today, Eric Garner was killed on Staten Island by police. The 43-year-old father died after he was put in a chokehold by New York Police Department Officer Daniel Pantaleo. His last words, “I can’t breathe” — repeated 11 times while half a dozen officers did nothing to intervene — helped fuel a movement for police accountability that continues today.

Yesterday, the city announced that, after waiting more than three years for a federal investigation into Garner’s killing to conclude, it will move forward with its own inquiry into Garner’s death. In a letter to the Department of Justice, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Lawrence Byrne wrote that if the Justice Department does not publicly announce whether it will bring charges against Pantaleo by August 31, the city will serve Pantaleo with departmental charges and try him in an administrative trial in early 2019.

The announcement on the eve of the anniversary of Garner’s death was almost certainly designed to help Mayor Bill de Blasio avoid criticism from Garner’s family and other advocates, who have been pushing the city to take action. This decision by the city, while welcome, does not excuse the administration for taking so long to do anything and also proves that the excuses for not taking action were flimsy at best.

To fully understand why this delay has been so frustrating, we should look back at how we got here.

A month after Garner’s death on Staten Island, then Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan failed to secure an indictment against Pantaleo. Since then, Garner’s supporters’ hopes for accountability have hinged on an ongoing federal investigation launched in 2014 by the Justice Department. The investigation began under Attorney General Eric Holder, continued under Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and is now proceeding under the current head of the Justice Department, Jeff Sessions.

In April, The New York Times reported that civil rights attorneys for the Justice Department recommended filing charges against Pantaleo, but top Justice Department officials expressed doubts about the case. Nearly three-and-a-half years after it opened a civil rights investigation into Garner’s death, there is no sign a decision from the Justice Department, one way or the other, is coming anytime soon.

As the federal investigation drags on, leaders in New York City refused, until yesterday, to take action. The Justice Department had asked the city to refrain from conducting its own investigation while the federal inquiry was ongoing. The city’s top lawyer, Zachary Carter, told The New York Times in February that, while New York is under no obligation to hold off on investigating, the city agreed to wait.

Last year, however, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the independent agency charged with investigating NYPD officer misconduct, conducted its own investigation into the Garner killing. The board found that charges should be brought against Pantaleo and recommended that he should face the stiffest punishments possible: suspension or termination. This was the third finding of abuse against Pantaleo by the CCRB, including two cases that happened prior to his role in the killing of Eric Garner.

If the Justice Department doesn’t announce the results of its investigation by the end of August, CCRB prosecutors, according to Deputy Commissioner Byrne, will present an administrative case against Pantaleo next year. The board could then make a recommendation to NYPD Chief James O’Neill, who will have the ultimate say in what punishment, if any, Pantaleo receives. You read that correctly. Under New York state law, only police commissioners have the authority to discipline police officers, meaning O’Neill can completely disregard the CCRB’s recommendations.

There is no reason the city should not have taken these steps much sooner. Not doing so gives the appearance of complete impunity at the NYPD, which, given its size and influence, has a ripple effect on police departments across the country.

Since Garner’s unnecessary and avoidable death, his family has fought tirelessly, even as they experienced additional tragedy. In December 2017, Garner’s daughter Erica, who fiercely fought for justice for her father, died suddenly. On Dec. 30, Mayor de Blasio joined activists and family members in mourning her loss, tweeting, “I am praying for her family, who have already been through so much.”

De Blasio’s decision yesterday proves that the mayor can do much more than pray for Garner’s family. Meanwhile, Pantaleo remains on the NYPD payroll, and Eric Garner’s family continues to wait for justice.

The federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to reunite the nearly 3,000 children it separated from their parents has temporarily blocked the government from deporting any of the families it reunites until at least July 23. 

The ACLU had requested the temporary restraining order due to concerns that families may have been coerced into agreeing to voluntarily return to countries where they may be in danger because they believed that was the only way they could get their children back. We wanted to make sure that parents would have time to consider their options and be fully informed of their rights before making their decision. 

The ruling came after a rollercoaster few days in which Judge Dana Sabraw both praised the administration for its good faith and compliance with court orders, then lambasted it for fundamentally misunderstanding what it was being asked to do. 

On Friday, July 13, when Judge Dana Sabraw held a status conference on the government’s efforts to reunite the children by the July 26 deadline, he seemed pleased with the progress. 

“There is substantial compliance,” Judge Sabraw said. “There is good faith being demonstrated, in no uncertain terms and measures, by the government. There is a collaborative process that is well underway.” 

But when the hearing ended, and the government submitted its written brief on progress, Judge Sabraw was furious. He said the government appeared to have a “fundamental miscomprehension” of what it was being asked to do and demanded that an official with “decision making authority” from the Department of Health and Human Services appear in his courtroom on Monday morning. 

The government brief included a declaration by Christopher Meekins, deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the HHS, which argued that by ordering the agency to adopt a streamlined process for verifying parentage, the court was endangering children. 

“While I am fully committed to complying with this Court’s order, I do not believe that the placing of children into such situations is consistent with the mission of HHS or my core values,” Meekin said. 

At issue is this: The Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency that has custody of the children separated from their parents, normally has custody of children who crossed the border without their parents. Those children are held in ORR custody until that agency finds a suitable sponsor for them in the United States. Sometimes that sponsor is a parent, who is already in the U.S., or another relative or a friend. 

In those circumstances, ORR conducts time-consuming vetting processes that include criminal background checks of the sponsor and every other adult living in the household as well as finger printing, possible DNA tests, and home visits.

Judge Sabraw made it clear to the agency that this process was created for sponsors who were applying to get custody of an unaccompanied minor, but that a more streamlined process was required for children who were forcibly taken away from their parents. The government simply needed to determine if the parent was really the parent, and whether or not the parent had a criminal history or something else that might jeopardize the child’s welfare.  He said that where there any doubts as to parentage, the government should conduct DNA tests. 

But in his declaration, Meekins alleged that by streamlining the process, the court was forcing the government to relinquish important security procedures that could result in a child being put into a dangerous situation. He also indicated that the agency was no longer doing DNA tests and was being forced to reunify children with parents before parentage could be confirmed. 

“It is clear from Mr. Meekins’s Declaration that HHS either does not understand the Court’s orders or is acting in defiance of them,” Judge Sabraw said. He added that Meekins appeared to be providing cover for the government’s “lack of foresight and infrastructure necessary to remedy the harms” caused by separating families and that HHS appeared to be “operating in a vacuum, entirely divorced from the undisputed circumstances of this case.” Judge Sabraw then ordered the government to submit its plan for reunifying the children with their parents, which the government did on Sunday. 

When court resumed on Monday morning, Jonathan White, the deputy director for HHS’s Office of Human Services Emergency Preparedness and Response, was in the California courtroom to answer questions. 

By then, the government had submitted a plan for family reunification to the court, which addressed many of Judge Sabraw’s concerns. 

Judge Sabraw said he was pleased with the plan, which he said, “does all of the things that I thought the court had made clear from day one.” White assured the court that reunifications were already under way, stressing that the government was working to reunify all of the children quickly and safely. 

After providing considerable detail on the numbers of children and their parents, and assuring the court that that the government would work to provide as much notice as possible before reunification so that non-governmental organizations could be present to provide for the families’ needs, Judge Sabraw appeared to wind up exactly where he started on Friday morning -- satisfied that the parties were working together to reunite as many children with their parents as quickly as possible. 

The next status conference is scheduled for July 20. Strap in.