Two religious families are suing Massachusetts after it rescinded their licenses to serve as foster parents because they refused to promise to affirm a hypothetical child’s gender identity.

A conservative law firm, the Alliance Defending Freedom, filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday over a rule from the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families that requires foster parents to promise that they will affirm a child’s gender identity. 

The lawsuit comes weeks after the reliably liberal U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that a similar requirement in Oregon violates the First Amendment. The court said of that rule, “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, which argued the case in Oregon, is representing two Christian families in Massachusetts. One couple, Nick and Audrey Jones, has been a licensed foster care family since 2023 and has provided care to seven children under the age of 6. However, the ADF says the state “intends to revoke” their license and remove a 17-month-old foster child from their home “solely because of their religious beliefs about gender-identity topics.”

The other parents, Greg and Marianelly Schrock, have fostered 28 children since 2019. Yet, in June of this year, the state revoked their foster care license. 

The ADF states that both families “happily provide a loving and respectful home for any child, including those who identify as LGBT,” but that they object to being required to affirm a child’s gender identity that does not match the biological sex. 

The lawsuit states that the DCF Gender Identity Policy “infringes on Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights in several ways.”

“First, the State requires the Joneses and the Schrocks to promise to use a child’s chosen pronouns, verbally affirm a child’s gender identity contrary to biological sex, and even encourage a child to medically transition, forcing these families to speak against their core religious beliefs,” the lawsuit states.

The ADF’s complaint notes that the process of obtaining a license for foster parents “involves a system of individualized assessments” and that the DCF “emphasizes matching to pair children with families best suited for them and grants discretionary exemptions to ensure that children are placed in the right home, like permitting parents to decline to host children based on age, sex, medical needs, behavioral needs, history of abuse, and disability, or just because it’s not a good fit.”

Despite the process for matching children with families, the DCF requires that any prospective foster parents automatically promise to affirm a child’s gender identity.

The lawsuit also says that DCF “regulations do not require parents to ‘affirm’ a child’s gender identity. Yet DCF requires parents to sign a form promising to do so anyway.”

The lawsuit asks the court to declare that the DCF’s policy “violated and continues to violate” the plaintiffs’ “constitutionally protected rights to free speech, free association, religious exercise, due process, and equal protection of the law,” and for an injunction to prevent the state from enforcing the policy.

A senior legal counsel for the ADF, Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse, said in a statement, “Massachusetts’ foster care system is in crisis: The commonwealth has more than 1,400 children who are waiting to be placed with a loving family. Yet Massachusetts is putting its ideological agenda ahead of the needs of these suffering kids.”

“This is a particularly egregious case because the Joneses care for a little girl who is happy and healthy in the only home she’s ever known. Now just because of the Joneses’ commonly held religious beliefs, the commonwealth says the Joneses are unfit to parent and is threatening to uproot this little child,” Mr. Wildmaln-Delphonse said.

The DCF did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.