Nebraska LB975 UPDATED

“When Bill Williams, his wife and another couple founded the child-placing agency Compass Nebraska in 2007, their Christian faith was key to their mission.

Using connections in the religious communities in Kearney, Grand Island and Hastings, they’ve recruited more than 100 foster families and worked with hundreds of children over the past decade.

Yet Williams says that work — grounded in God and with children’s best interests in mind — is threatened by shifting cultural mores and the possibility of lost funding or litigation against entities which decline to work with certain families based on the agency operators’ faith.

“I think there’s a concern here in Nebraska that we are at risk of losing our ability to operate as a faith-based organization,” Williams said last week.

Compass is one of four child-placing agencies, working together under the name Freedom to Serve in Faith Coalition, which are supporting a bill in the Legislature that would protect them from adverse action by the state for declining service based on their sincerely held religious beliefs.

State Sen. Mark Kolterman of Seward, who sponsored the measure (LB975), says it isn’t intended to encourage discrimination against adoptive or foster parents who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

“I’m not judging them,” he said. “It’s not my goal to judge them.”

Instead, he said, he wants to protect child-placing agencies from having to choose between violating their religious principles or closing their doors to the detriment of thousands of Nebraska children.

Backlash from LGBT rights activists has nonetheless been swift, fierce and voluminous since he introduced the bill in January, he said.

“You can’t believe the stuff I’ve heard,” Kolterman said. “It’s pretty vicious, and it’s not necessary.”

The measure will be the subject of a public hearing before the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Committee member Colby Coash, a state senator from Lincoln, cosponsored the bill.

Another committee member, Lincoln Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks, said she opposes the bill and doesn’t expect to be swayed.

“I can’t imagine the argument. So far I haven’t heard it,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I’m not going to listen.”

She fears the bill could open the door to “other possibilities for discrimination,” she said, or that rural agencies refusing to serve certain people might lead to burdensome commutes for those families or discourage them from becoming adoptive or foster parents at all.

“For state dollars to be allowing discrimination against families just because they are LGBT … doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

“That’s our market. That’s where we focus our energy.”

Compass does not ever refuse to help children based on their faith, Williams said.

And the agency doesn’t outright reject nonreligious people — the goal is to provide as many safe homes as possible — but instead refers them to other groups, he said. Kolterman’s bill would also allow faith-based agencies to opt out of referring families to another agency.

“We see the value in partnering with a diverse number of organizations because we all have different abilities,” he said. “There’s a place for all of us at the table.”

Nebraska has 31 agencies that provide adoption or foster care services, and many are faith-based. The coalition supporting Kolterman’s bill includes Compass, Christian Heritage in Lincoln, and Catholic Charities and Bethany Christian Services in Omaha.

Those agencies collectively rely on hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts each year for child welfare and related services with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. Compass, for example, has an agreement with HHS worth up to $632,909 this year to provide foster care, family counseling and support, and life skills coaching for teenagers, according to the state’s online contracts database.

The agencies are trying to avoid suffering the same fate as those elsewhere in the U.S. Faith-based adoption and foster care providers in at least four states have chosen to close down after being denied critical state or federal money because they refused to place children with same-sex couples.

That hasn’t been an issue in Nebraska until recently because of state policies that prevented same-sex couples from becoming foster or adoptive parents.

But a series of administrative actions and court rulings last year, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down state bans on same-sex marriage, eliminated those restrictions.

The changes in Kolterman’s bill could be met with similar opposition if they were enacted, warned Danielle Conrad, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, which was involved in a successful lawsuit challenging the state’s ban on gay and lesbian people becoming foster parents.

She called the measure broadly written, and said it could allow an agency to refuse to place a child with a biological relative who doesn’t share that agency’s religion.

“When private agencies contract with the state and receive tax dollars to find families for children in the child welfare system, their religious beliefs should not be allowed to trump the best interests of the children,” Conrad said.

Kolterman, whose twin brother is an adoptive parent, said families should be allowed to connect with agencies that reflect their own beliefs. He said he doesn’t want to see faith-based child placing agencies forced out of the system for upholding their views on what a traditional family should be.

“Loving, caring homes is really what it’s about to me,” Kolterman said.”

Adoption bill aimed at protecting faith-based agencies, supporters say [Lincoln Journal Star 2/16/16 by Zach Pluhacek]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update: “Two state senators stormed out of the Judiciary Committee on Friday after the committee voted to advance a controversial foster care bill to the floor for debate.

The bill would allow faith-based foster care agencies to refuse to work with same-sex foster parents, while keeping state funding.

The measure advanced out of the executive session on a 5-3 vote after a heated debate among committee members.

Adam Morfeld is one of those senators who stormed out of the meeting.

“I am vigorously opposed to this bill. I am going to engage on extended debate on the bill and make it so we have a long conversation about why this is harmful for kids and families in Nebraska,” Morfeld said.

Compass, a faith-based family service agency which receives state funding, supports the bill. They say, if anything, the bill is progressive thinking for the state, and it allows foster care agencies like theirs to help refer candidates elsewhere if they do not see eye-to-eye.

Bill Williams, Chief Operating Officer of Compass, said, “Other families who don’t identify with a faith-based agency are referred to foster and adoption agencies that prepare them to serve children.”

Compass thinks if passed, the bill will do great thing for the state of adoption here in Nebraska.

“We believe that LB 975 will provide the most homes for hurting kids and will make sure no prospective foster parent misses an opportunity to serve children,” Williams said.

Some senators believe the bill could pass with certain amendments, but Sen. Morfeld says the measure shouldn’t advance at all.

“When it comes to the basis of discriminating on the basis of religion and LGBT status, I don’t think there is compromise, particularly when it includes tax payer dollars we should be contracting as a state with agencies that have the best interests of the child in mind, not the political and religious interests of the adults,” Morfeld said.

Legislators only have 15 days left to discuss the bill before the session ends.

Of course, the measure could always be up for discussion in the next session.”

[1011 now 3/19/16 by Max Massey]

Update 2:”A bill that would allow religious child welfare agencies to turn away potential foster parents based on religious grounds has died in the Legislature.

ACLU Executive Director Danielle Conrad issued the following statement:

“Today was a victory for fairness and a victory for Nebraska children in need. Our state is full of qualified loving families of all shapes and sizes that should have an opportunity to be a part of the child welfare system. We’re thankful to those in the Nebraska Legislature who saw this bill for what it was – a license to discriminate that would harm children in our state. Governments contractors who are supported by tax dollars should not be turning away qualified families or be allowed to put their own religious views above the best interests of our children.”

Bill Protecting State Funding for Faith Based Foster Homes Against LGBT Parents Dies [ABC Nebraska 4/9/16 by Claudia Amezcua]