The Vermont Department of Children and Families (DCF) had a procedure that required parents wanting to get a foster license to commit upfront and in advance that they would call a transgender-identifying child by whatever name and pronouns the child wanted.
Melinda Antonucci and Casey Mathieu were reportedly required take part in LGBTQ+ training that violated the First Amendment. Their attorneys at the Center for American Liberty filed a lawsuit.
"The First amendment prohibits compelled speech, and it protects religious exercise," litigator Josh Dixon tells AFN.
The Center for American Liberty sought a preliminary injunction and lost at the trial court. The non-profit legal organization was able to resolve the case while it was on appeal at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, with the DCF agreeing to adopt a new set of policies that do not require this sort of commitment from prospective foster parents.
"Rather, what they will do is they will evaluate a home at the placement stage, and if they feel like a home is not appropriate at the placement stage for an individual transgender-identifying child, they won't place the child in that home," Dixon relays. "But that doesn't mean that the parents lose their license, as they did previously."
Antonucci and Mathieu had their license approved and then revoked because of the old procedure. But now, as part of this settlement, they are going to get their license back and be able to continue fostering under the new rules.
While this settlement only applies to the state of Vermont, Dixon says the winds are changing, and people in other states have all the more reason to seek legal advice when confronted with these same types of policies.
"We're trying to chip away at this in every state and get these policies off the books," Dixon tells AFN. "If the government can enforce ideological purity here, then it can do it in other areas of life as well."
