Report 2018 Project Blitz (PDF)
Report 2018 Project Blitz (Text)
The second push has been for resolutions and proclamations recognizing the importance of religious history and freedom. At least five states — Michigan, Utah, Oklahoma Kentucky and Tennessee — have enacted measures recognizing Jan. 16 as Religious Freedom Day. Federal recognition of Religious Freedom Day began with President George H. W. Bush in 1993, and presidents have generally signed a new proclamation every year since.
January 16 is the anniversary of the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom’s passage, which served as a model for the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — an amendment which says Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The third Project Blitz campaign has included defining public policies in favor of biblical values concerning marriage and sexuality. Some 250 model bills with matching language have been introduced in 42 states. About two dozen of these bills have passed. In the latest legislative session, the Center found more than 40 such bills introduced in 18 states.
Typical of this category is legislation that would allow state occupational license holders, such as barbers, lawyers and even health care providers, to cite their sincerely held religious beliefs as a defense for denying services. A version in Texas — pending in a House committee —bans state agencies from adopting any rule, regulation or policy, or impose a penalty that would limit an applicant’s free exercise of religion.
Adoption rules But much of the debate sparked by Project Blitz has focused on adoption rules.
Texas was one of the first places where the “Child Protection Act” was introduced. The first version died in committee in 2015 but lawmakers kept pushing at least six more versions of the bill until it passed in 2017.
The measure protects faith-based child placing agencies that deny services based on their sincerely held religious beliefs from losing their funding or state license and calls for these agencies to refer prospective adoptive or foster parents whom they don’t feel they can accommodate to nearby agencies that can provide that service.
Rep. Terry Canales, a Democrat from South Texas, voted for the bill but said he’d never heard of Project Blitz or the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation.
“These types of bills have become the norm here,” Canales said. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they are protecting or discriminating against someone…it’s nearly impossible to know who’s behind them or their intent.”
At least 10 of these adoption bills were introduced during the past legislative session in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. All of them remained stagnant or died in committees except for one in Tennessee — which passed the House but was then shelved in the Senate.
States that have passed adoption laws State Year Bill Number Alabama 2017 HB24 Kansas 2017 SB284 Michigan 2015 HB4188 Michigan 2015 HB4189 Michigan 2015 HB4190 Mississippi 2016 HB1523 North Dakota 2003 SB2188 Oklahoma 2018 SB1140 South Carolina 2018 HB4950 South Dakota 2017 SB149 Texas 2017 HB3859 Virginia 2012 HB189 Virginia 2012 SB349 Source: Center for Public Integrity analysis of state legislation
Rep. Tim Rudd, a Republican from Murfreesboro, Tenn., sponsored the bill that passed in the House. He dismissed opponents’ arguments as, “philosophical discussion,” because gay prospective parents can adopt or foster through other agencies.
“Organizations that are against faith-based child placement orphanages are trying to drive them out of business or get them to adapt to their way of thinking or drop their religious beliefs through lawsuits,” Rudd said.
Rudd said the bill did not originate from Project Blitz. He said the legislation was based on Virginia’s law and was given to him by John Bumpus, a Shelbyville lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for Congress and the state legislature in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Bumpus is also a trustee on the board of Tennessee Baptist Children’s Homes, a privately funded child placing agency that also vets prospective parents based on religion.
Greg McCoy, president of the Tennessee Baptist Children’s Homes, said even if the bill passes his organization will continue to operate without any government funding. He said his agency would rather shut down than be forced to, “break our convictions,” and this way, “there are no strings attached.”
In the courts
At Miracle Hill, prospective foster parents are asked to provide contact information of their pastor and testimony of their faith in Jesus Christ, according to their online application.
In 2010, Lydia Currie approached the Department of Social Services office in Greenville County looking to become a foster parent.
“We knew that the number of children needing care had become a crisis in our state, and that older children were being warehoused in modern-day orphanages,” she wrote in a February opinion essay for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a news agency focused on covering Jewish communities internationally.
“Boys with a history in the system are hard to place in families because of the assumption that they might be violent,” she added. “And we decided that we wanted to give one of them a home.”
Currie was referred by the state to Miracle Hill but when she read the online application, she learned she was barred because her family was Jewish.
Miracle Hill spokeswoman Sandy Furnell said the state’s religious exemption is not discriminatory, because it applies to agencies of all faiths and allows agencies like Miracle Hill to continue operating.
“If faith-based child placing agencies are not allowed to follow their doctrine then we wouldn’t be faith based anymore,” Furnell said. “It would be taking the heart out of what we do best, help children find families within our own community.”
“If faith-based child placing agencies are not allowed to follow their doctrine then we wouldn’t be faith based anymore.”
Miracle Hill spokeswoman Sandy Furnell Currie sharply disagrees. She says there are countless children across the country who are and will be affected by the exclusion of good families based on religious requirements. “For them, the time lost to an institution instead of spent with a loving family could alter the course of their lives,” Currie wrote.
There are more than 8,000 faith-based child placing agencies across the country, according to HHS. In fiscal year 2018 Miracle Hill cared for more than 300 children and received about $600,000 from the state.
It took Currie two years before she could gain access to a 9-year-old boy who was in the care of another private agency, according to the editorial.
Meanwhile, a variety of court cases have raged on in a legal environment that seems confusing and at times contradictory.
Lata Nott, executive director of the First Amendment Center at the Freedom Forum Institute in Washington D.C., a nonpartisan educational organization, said discrimination based on religion by any agency taking government funds is a violation of the establishment clause of the Constitution, which prohibits the government from “establishing” a religion.
“As a private organization, maybe they could do that,” Nott said, referring to the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a Colorado cakeshop to deny services to a same-sex couple. “But the government can’t favor one religion over another.”
Nott said it is possible these bills are being passed in multiple states in hopes that a friendly judge will decide the Establishment Clause does not apply to faith-based adoption agencies. She said this sort of legal ‘shopping’ for a favorable ruling, also known as impact litigation, is used by both liberals and conservatives.
The lessons of upbringing The roots of Aimee Maddonna’s case against Miracle Hill go back to her upbringing in a home that included foster siblings. Her parents, she said, instilled in their children the importance of providing a safe, loving home to children in need of a foster family.
In 2014, Madonna and her husband —who have three children of their own —contacted Miracle Hill, she said, to see whether her family could volunteer to work with foster children.
“I wanted to volunteer first, take them school clothes shopping, to family dinners, picnics…before I threw myself into this,” said Madonna
After Maddonna provided Miracle Hill with a variety of application information, the last step, a Miracle Hill official said, was getting the name of her church as a reference. After Madonna provided that, a Miracle Hill representative wrote back later that same year to say the agency only accepted Protestant Christians.
Aimee Maddonna with her two sons, ages 9 and 6, inside their home in Simpsonville, South Carolina on April 1, 2019. Maddonna sued the state and federal government that enabled a state-funded foster care agency to deny services to non-Protestant Christians. (Nathaniel Cary/USA TODAY NETWORK) Maddonna said she reached out again to the agency in February of this year and was turned away, but this time she decided to sue.
By then, there had already been significant political jousting over the issue in the Palmetto State.
In early 2017, nine days before President Trump took office, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services put in place regulations requiring states to ensure the agencies receiving federal funds do not deny services to anyone on the basis of religion, according to court documents
But in February 2018, Governor Henry McMaster wrote a letter to the Administration for Children and Families in HHS asking that faith-based adoption agencies be granted a waiver from the requirement that federal grant funds be withheld or returned in case of violations of non-discrimination provisions.
Before HHS replied to his letter, McMaster issued an executive order to permit child placement agencies such as Miracle Hill to have religious requirements. And in June 2018, the legislature passed a provision granting the same exemption and protections to these agencies.
Six months later, Steven Wagner, principal deputy assistant secretary at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, bolstered McMaster’s decision by granting Miracle Hill the same protections federally in response to the letter.
In February, Maddonna filed a lawsuit in Greenville’s state district court alleging that the SCDSS has been aware that Miracle Hill has been turning away foster and adoptive parents and families on the basis of religion since 2017 and yet granted the agency a $600,000 grant in FY 2018.
“It is never acceptable to use state or federal funds to discriminate based on religion,” reads the complaint.
In March, McMaster asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing Maddonna’s complaint was not, “new, unusual, or unique,” to South Carolina or the nation because state and federal governments have partnered with faith-based providers for hundreds of years and such partnerships have been widely acknowledged to be constitutionally permissible.
An initial hearing in Maddonna’s case has not yet been scheduled. But it seems inevitable that fighting will continue in the courts.
Rachel Laser, head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a non-profit advocacy group promoting religious freedom who’s also representing Maddonna, said the federal government’s actions proves that the Trump administration is part of a “war on church-state separation and on religious freedom for all.”
And during this year’s National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 7, President Trump made his stance clear.
In this Sept. 1, 2017 file photo, religious leaders pray with President Donald Trump after he signed a proclamation for a national day of prayer to occur on Sunday, Sept. 3, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP/Evan Vucci) “My administration is working to ensure that faith-based adoption agencies are able to help vulnerable children find their forever families,” said Trump, “while following their deeply held belief.”
On May 21, HHS issued a new “conscience rule” that expands protections to persons and agencies working under HHS that deny services based on their religious or moral beliefs. This final rule covers more than 600,000 hospitals, physicians, mental health practitioners and other health care providers nationwide, but also some 8,000 faith-based child-placing agencies, according to HHS.
The rule is being challenged by human rights groups that filed a lawsuit a week later against HHS in U.S. District Court in San Francisco; they argue that the rule is unconstitutional and exceeds the department’s statutory authority.
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