Must Philadelphia accommodate Catholic Social Services refusal to refer adoptees to same-sex couples

 

When Catholic Social services contract with the City of Philadelphia expired the City refused to renew it.  The City's Ordinance forbade discrimination in public accommodations.  But The United States joined as a friend of the court in Fulton and Catholic Social Services v. City of Philadelphia.  It frames the issue as:

Whether the City of Philadelphia’s termination of a contract that allowed Catholic Social Services to help place children in the City with foster parents, on the basis of Catholic Social Services’ unwillingness to endorse same-sex couples as foster parents, violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

As the DOJ further elaborates the question:

In accordance with its religious beliefs, Catholic Social Services is willing to provide foster certifications for households headed by married couples or single people, but not households headed by unmarried couples. Because it adheres to the belief that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, it regards all same-sex couples as unmarried.  

The upshot of those beliefs is that the organization will provide foster certifications for married opposite-sex couples and single, unmarried individuals (including gay and lesbian individuals) but not for same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples. 

The Catholic Archdiocese, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty launched a direct attack on the principle that laws of general application may constitutionally bar otherwise unlawful activity despite its use in a religious ritual.  Thus did Antonin Scalia find that the hallucinogen peyote could not be used as an element of a Native American religious ritual. Thus the Church poses the issues as:

Whether Employment Division v. Smith should be revisited?  Whether a government violates the First Amendment by conditioning a religious agency’s ability to participate in the foster care system on taking actions and making statements that directly contradict the agency’s religious beliefs?

When one is engaged in private activity such as placing foster children, I suppose one can  pick and choose who is the beneficiary of your largesse.  But not so when you are seeking public funds.

However I would not put any money that mattered on the proposition that the Supreme Court will agree that Catholic social Services was properly denied injunctive relief.