Kansas House embraces bill on religious, moral liberty within state's foster care program

Yahoo

21-02-2025

Rija Khan, of Overland Park, urged Kansas House members to reject House bill 2311 because it would, in her view, subject Kansas children in foster care to religious discrimination. The House voted overwhelmingly to approve the bill and forward it to the Senate. (Kansas Reflector screen capture of Legislature's YouTube channel)
TOPEKA — Devout Catholic Stacey Chik pleaded with Kansas legislators to pass a law forbidding a state agency from requiring foster or adoptive parents to adhere to policies in conflict with their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs.
Her idea was to embed in statute a way of blocking the Kansas Department for Children and Families from imposing a preference for foster care or adoption families committed to supporting DCF regulations on a child's sexual orientation or gender identity.
The proposed reform in House Bill 2311 — easily passed this week by the Kansas House — would mandate DCF acknowledge and accept the moral or religious perspectives of potential foster or adoption parents. It would allow filing of lawsuits and recovery of damages and attorney fees from DCF if such barriers to foster care or adoption were enforced after July 1. The bill was sent to the Kansas Senate.
'It is the families who are firmly rooted in faith communities that tend to thrive as healthy and healing homes for foster children precisely because they are surrounded by a community who loves them and loves the service they are doing,' said Chik, who adopted four children and works as executive vice president of Life on Belay. 'HB 2311 is not just about protecting religious liberty. It is about protecting the thousands of children who rely on the generosity of faith-driven families to care for them in their most vulnerable moments.'
In the House Child Welfare and Foster Care Committee, a handful of people spoke in favor of the bill. More than 50 shared views in opposition.
Lawrence resident Chloe Chaffin, with a mother and grandmother who were adopted, said she came out as queer at age 22. She informed her mother Jan. 28 after absorbing testimony during a Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee hearing in support of Senate Bill 63, which banned health care for transgender Kansans under age 18. The Legislature subsequently overrode Gov. Laura Kelly's veto of that bill.
'Kids need the state's protection from all forms of neglect and abuse,' said Chaffin, who indicated she was strongly opposed to HB 2311. 'Allowing them to be placed in homes with foster parents who will invalidate their queerness and seek to change and fix that which is not broken only compounds existing traumas and risks dangerous mental health crises.'
She denounced political targeting of LGBTQ children by members of the Legislature and argued their focus in terms of children in foster care or considered for adoption ought to be on leading 'with kindness and protection instead of compounding the pain of their hardest moments.'
Kansas has struggled with a surge in children placed in foster care. Despite reductions of that population, there were 5,800 Kansas children in out-of-home placements in late 2024.
During House floor debate on the foster care and adoption bill, an amendment was added by Rep. Cyndi Howerton, a Wichita Republican and chair of the House foster care committee. Her amendment assigned legal responsibility for religious or moral violations contained in the bill exclusively with DCF — not DCF contractors or individuals working on foster care or adoption.
An amendment from Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Shawnee Democrat, to modify the bill's language so best interests of a child in foster or adoptive care remained the top priority at DCF was rejected by the House. She said the amendment was necessary because the bill was drafted in a way that could force a subsection of children in Kansas to endure more trauma.
'You have to remember why children come into the system in the first place,' Ruiz said. 'They come into the system because of abuse and neglect, and it comes in so many forms.'
Ruiz told House colleagues that Kansas youth were physically beaten and emotionally traumatized by parents and church leaders who wanted children to adhere to a certain sexual orientation or gender identity. Some kids were expected to 'pray away the gay,' she said.
Others were compelled to undergo so-called conversion therapy, she said. It has little basis in science, but proposes to erase a person's gender identity or sexuality — usually to conform to ideals of other people.
'This bill opens up the door to one of the most horrible forms of therapy that any human being can be exposed to,' Ruiz said.
Rep. Tim Johnson, a Basehor Republican who carried the bill on the House floor, pushed back against Ruiz' conclusions. He said adults involved in foster care and adoption in Kansas shouldn't have to shelve their beliefs and values. It was wrong for DCF to disqualify people for roles in adoption or foster care because they weren't 'necessarily in favor of certain behaviors,' Johnson said.
He said the bill offered a First Amendment shield to foster or adoptive children as well as foster or adoptive parents.
'This protects both sides. It makes sure that those with different views all get an opportunity,' Johnson said.
He said there had been issues of discrimination in the evaluation of adoptive and foster care volunteers. It's referred to as 'shadow banning,' he said, and occurred in back rooms and office cubicles among government workers making decisions on foster care and ad0ption.
He alleged DCF hadn't been forthcoming with the Legislature about its policies or practices at the heart of the House bill.
'Decisions are made. Not recorded,' Johnson said. 'Silence from DCF is deafening.'