Catholic Charities loses ruling on foster care
Judge rules state is not obligated to renew agencies' contracts
In a packed courtroom just one day earlier, lawyers for Catholic Charities urged Sangamon County Circuit Judge John Schmidt to prevent the state from suddenly severing a partnership that has funded foster care and adoption services in Illinois for four decades.
But Schmidt wrote in his ruling released Thursday that the longevity of the relationship between the state and Catholic Charities in Joliet, Peoria, Springfield and Belleville did not entitle them to automatic renewal of their contracts.
"No citizen has a recognized legal right to a contract with the government," Schmidt wrote.
Since March, state officials have been investigating whether religious agencies that receive public funds to license foster care parents are breaking anti-discrimination laws if they turn away openly *** parents.
In discussions after the civil union bill went into effect in June, Catholic Charities told the state that accommodating prospective foster parents in civil unions would violate Catholic Church teaching that defines marriage between a man and a woman.
Pointing to a clause in the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act that they believe protects religious institutions that don't recognize civil unions, the agencies said they would refer those couples elsewhere and only license married couples and single parents living alone.
But lawyers for the Illinois attorney general said that exemption only shields religious clergy who don't want to officiate at civil unions. The policy of Catholic Charities violates state anti-discrimination laws that demand couples in civil unions be treated the same as married couples, they said.
Schmidt's ruling avoided the religious freedom issue. Instead he focused on whether the state violated the property rights of Catholic Charities when it declined to sign new contracts for the next fiscal year. Previous contracts expired June 30.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...0819,0,7997624.story
A woman told me that in the 60s she and her husband had checked into fostering children. They were stopped cold and told they couldn't be foster parents because when ask if they attended church they said no.