The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Oregon’s Department of Human Services from denying a woman the ability to adopt siblings after she refused to comply with gender identity pronouns.
The woman and biological mother of five, Jessica Bates, felt the urge to adopt after her husband died in 2017. Upon starting the process, she was informed that homes must respect a child’s “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression,” a policy contradicting Bates’ religious beliefs.
“I need to let you know I cannot support this behavior in a child,” Bates wrote to Oregon’s Department of Human Services at the time. “I have no problem loving them and accepting them as they are, but I would not encourage them in this behavior. I believe God gives us our gender/sex and it’s not something we get to choose.”
“We hold that Oregon’s policy violates the First Amendment as applied to Bates. We reverse the district court’s denial of preliminary injunctive relief and direct that a preliminary injunction be entered,” the judges wrote.
“No one thinks, for example, that a state could exclude parents from adopting foster children based on those parents’ political views, race, or religious affiliations,” the court explained in its ruling. “Adoption is not a constitutional law dead zone. And a state’s general conception of the child’s best interest does not create a force field against the valid operation of other constitutional rights.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom filed the lawsuit for Bates in 2023. Because of the ruling, the Oregon agency must reconsider Bates’ application to adopt, as she will likely succeed in arguing that the state violated the First Amendment, the legal group said.
