President Donald Trump issued a new executive order on Thursday titled “Fostering the Future for American Children and Families,” setting forth a wide-ranging federal effort to strengthen faith-based involvement in the foster care system.
The order opens by expressing concern that “Some jurisdictions and organizations maintain policies that discourage or prohibit qualified families from serving children in need as foster and adoptive parents because of their sincerely-held religious beliefs or adherence to basic biological truths.”
As part of the initiative, Trump directed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “publish annually a scorecard that measures and is used to evaluate State-level achievement of key outcomes and metrics that reduce unnecessary entries into foster care” that evaluates states’ “partnerships and collaboration with appropriate non-governmental allies, including faith-based organizations.”
The executive order requires Kennedy, together with the directors of the White House Faith Office and the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, to “take appropriate action to address State and local policies and practices that inappropriately prohibit participation in federally-funded child-welfare programs by qualified individuals or organizations based upon their sincerely-held religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
Another priority outlined in the order is to “increase partnerships between agencies and faith-based organizations and houses of worship to serve families whose children have been placed in foster care or are at risk of being placed in foster care.”
During a ceremony at the White House, the president and first lady Melania Trump offered details on the “Fostering the Future” plan. Trump highlighted the challenges facing religious foster care providers, stating that “Faith-based nonprofits are the nation’s most trusted institutions, interacting with the foster care system.”
He argued that ideological opposition has hindered these organizations, remarking, “Yet radical Left policies in states nationwide make it much harder, not easier, for those families to open up their homes. But we’re working on that. We’re dealing with the radical Left. It’s not easy, but we’re winning and we’re winning big. That’s why, with the order that we’re doing today, we’re taking [on] the ridiculous woke policies that discriminate against Christians and families of faith.”
Recent actions in states like Vermont and Massachusetts have restricted foster care participation by couples and organizations with traditional views on marriage and sexuality, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 2021 ruling in Fulton v. Philadelphia.
That ruling found that Philadelphia violated the Constitution when it excluded Catholic Social Services over its refusal to place children with same-sex couples.
“Government fails to act neutrally when it proceeds in a manner intolerant of religious beliefs or restricts practices because of their religious nature,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the Fulton opinion.
