Vermont foster parents sue state after license is revoked over opposition to trans ideology
A couple in Vermont are suing the state, alleging that they unconstitutionally had their license to serve as foster parents revoked due to their religiously based opposition to LGBT ideology.
Melinda Antenucci and Casey Mathieu filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Vermont last week, naming several employees at the Vermont Department of Children and Families as defendants. As explained in the complaint, the devout Christian couple first sought a foster care license in early 2023 after deciding that, “Fostering children in need is how they intend to put their faith into practice, which a [foster care] license allows them to do.”
While Antenucci and Mathieu indicated on the form they were required to fill out as part of the process that they would be willing to foster LGBT-identified children, the latter told the department that she and Mathieu “had some hesitation with fostering a transgender-identifying child” without elaborating further.
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According to the lawsuit, “The hesitation is not due to any discriminatory animus against transgender-identifying persons, but rather due to an inability—due to their sincerely held religious beliefs—to facilitate controversial psychological and medical treatment that a transgender-identifying child might request, such as social transitioning, administration of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, or removal of healthy body parts.”
“If Melinda and Casey are not required to engage in or facilitate these treatments, they would be willing to foster a transgender-identifying child,” the complaint noted. The department employee who conducted the home visit where Antenucci expressed reservations informed her that such hesitations could jeopardize the couple’s ability to obtain a license to foster from the state.
The lawsuit detailed how, prior to a second home visit, Antenucci and Mathieu received a “supplemental training module” via email that “taught foster parents to affirm a foster child’s transgender identity and facilitate the provision of medical and psychological treatment intended to aid in the child’s transition if the child requested it.”
When the home visit took place, Antenucci again shared her reservations about complying with trans ideology and dispensing body-deforming experimental puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to the children who would be in her care.
While the state gave the couple their foster care license earlier this year and they had the opportunity to foster an 8-year-old boy for two weeks, Antenucci’s decision to share a Facebook post expressing support for parental notification if a child expresses confusion about their sex and begins to self-identify as the opposite gender at school caught the attention of department employees. Department staff then reached out to her and asked a series of hypothetical questions about scenarios that could arise if she ever fostered a trans-identified child.
In April, Antenucci received an email explaining that “since [she] will not foster a transgender child and discuss they/them pronouns with [her] child, then [the department does not] know how [it] can move forward with fostering given the inability to predict any foster child’s journey with their own identity.” She was given the option to give up her foster care license voluntarily or have it revoked.
When Antenucci and Mathieu refused to give up their foster care license voluntarily, the state ended up revoking it on July 1 and gave them until Aug. 1 to appeal the decision to the Vermont Human Services Board. The couple intends to make such an appeal.
The letter the couple received from the department cited as a basis for its decision a violation of Rule 200, which states: “All foster parents are prohibited from engaging in any form of discrimination against a foster child based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or disability.”
The state expressed concern about Antenucci’s declaration that “I’m not going to take any foster child that identifies as a ‘they’ or ‘them’ from the beginning” and her decision not to teach her biological 5-year-old son about “they/them” pronouns in the event she fostered a trans-identified child because she viewed it as “not personally legitimate.”
The department added, “She [Antenucci] also indicated that the State should not permit any gender affirming treatments for children.”
The complaint maintains that the state violated Antenucci’s constitutional rights under the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution by forcing them to engage in compelled speech and expressing hostility toward their deeply held religious beliefs. The lawsuit seeks a ruling “Declaring Defendants’ policies as alleged herein unlawful on their face and as applied to Plaintiffs” and blocking the defendants from revoking the foster care license.
The plaintiffs are also asking for nominal damages and attorneys' fees. This is not the first time Vermont has found itself subject to a lawsuit for revoking foster care licenses from couples opposed to LGBT ideology on religious grounds. Last month, two couples in Windham County, Vermont, sued the state for declining to renew their foster care licenses because they held traditional beliefs that contradicted the tenets of LGBT ideology.
In the past, refusals by state or local governments to contract with religious foster care providers due to their opposition to LGBT ideology have been found unconstitutional. In the U.S. Supreme Court caseFulton v. City of Philadelphia, the justices unanimously agreed that “the refusal of Philadelphia to contract with [Catholic Social Services] for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny, and violates the First Amendment.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
