KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A lawsuit filed by a Jewish couple who said they were denied foster care services because of their faith is advancing after the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected a request from the state to reconsider an earlier decision that said the couple had the right to sue.
In January 2022, Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram filed a lawsuit after they said a law passed in 2020 allowed the state-funded Holston United Methodist Home for Children to reject them as adoptive parents because of their faith. The law allows private agencies to deny adoptions based on moral and religious grounds.
The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of that law.
In June 2022, the lawsuit was dismissed by a state court. It said the 2020 law had nothing to do with the agency's refusal, and said the matter had been resolved because the couple later became foster parents.
In August 2023, the Court of Appeals of Tennessee decided that the couple actually had standing to challenge the state's law, reversing the earlier decision. Months later, in October 2023, the state asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to review the appeals court's decision.
On May 17, Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected the state's request — effectively keeping the appeals court's decision intact. In the same decision, the court said six other people who joined the Rutan-Rams in the case as plaintiffs also had the right to sue.
They include four faith leaders, a retired psychologist and an officer of the Tennessee chapter of Americans United For Separation of Church and State.
In the original lawsuit, the couple said the Holston United Methodist Home for Children would have provided out-of-state training services, as required by the Tennessee Department of Children's Services. The services included foster training and a home study by a licensed agency.
It is one of the few agencies in Tennessee able to offer such services, the lawsuit said. The couple said the agency told them it “only provide[s] adoption services to prospective adoptive families that share our [Christian] belief system” in an email the day before they would have started training.
The lawsuit said Rutan-Rams originally wanted to foster and adopt a child from Florida. The August 2023 court opinion said they were not able to foster the child from Florida, as they originally hoped. It said the couple instead fostered a child in Tennessee, after getting training directly from the Department of Children's Services.
"Plaintiffs allege that Defendants 'are violating the religious-freedom and equal protection guarantees of the Tennessee Constitution by funding a child-placing agency that discriminates in state-funded programming against prospective and current foster parents based on the parents’ religious beliefs,'" the August 2023 opinion said. "We conclude that Plaintiffs have standing as taxpayers to challenge the constitutionality of (the law)."