Two Vermont couples are suing the state’s Department for Children and Families, alleging that foster parent requirements intended to protect LGBTQ+ youth are unconstitutional and discriminate against Christians.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the prominent conservative legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom, aims to strike down state regulations prohibiting anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination among Vermont foster parents.
“Vermont’s foster-care system is in crisis: There aren’t enough families to care for vulnerable kids and children born with drug dependencies have nowhere to call home,” Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom representing the couples, said in a press release about the lawsuit. “Yet Vermont is putting its ideological agenda ahead of the needs of these suffering kids.”
The suit names three top officials as defendants: Chris Winters, the commissioner of the Department for Children and Families; Aryka Radke, deputy commissioner of the department’s Family Services Division; and Stacey Edmunds, the director of the department’s Residential Licensing & Special Investigations.
It’s the latest Vermont case filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a national conservative legal group. The organization has filed multiple suits in Vermont, targeting limits on public money in private schools, protecting employees accused of transphobia and seeking to strike down state restrictions on anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.
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In an emailed statement, Radke said the department does not comment on pending lawsuits.
“That said, generally speaking, DCF takes the care and support of youth in our custody seriously, and we work to ensure that youth in foster care are placed in homes that support all aspects of what makes them who they are,” Radke wrote. “This includes their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
It is the department’s responsibility “to ensure all children and youth will reside in a home with caregivers who are committed to fully embracing and holistically affirming and supporting them,” Radke continued, noting that the suit had been filed at the beginning of Pride month. “We need assurance that the foster and kin care homes selected for our children and youth can honor these personal facets of their being when they choose to share them with us.”
Tuesday’s case stems from the experience of two Windham County couples, Brian and Katy Wuoti and Bryan and Rebecca Gantt. Both couples had foster care licenses for years, having fostered and later adopted multiple children in the state.
But in the past two years, both couples had their foster care licenses revoked because of their beliefs on LGBTQ+ issues, according to the lawsuit. The Wuotis and the Gantts are Christian, and Brian Wuoti and Bryan Gantt are both pastors, according to the complaint.
Both couples “believe that God created humans as male and female and that a person’s sex is binary and fixed by God at conception,” the suit reads. And both couples “cannot attend, associate with, or participate in events like pride parades because they convey a message about human sexuality that goes against their faith.”
According to the lawsuit, after discussing those beliefs with the Wuotis and the Gantts, state officials became concerned that the couples would be unable to properly care for and support LGBTQ+ children.
“I have no doubt that you would be welcoming to a child in your home; but if you are unable to encourage and support children in their sexual and gender identity, that essentially makes you ineligible for renewal of your foster parent license,” one DCF staffer wrote to the Wuotis in 2022, according to the suit.
Per Department for Children and Families policy, “discrimination and bias based on a child or youth’s real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression” is prohibited.
New rules implemented in 2023 made that policy more explicit. The rules “prohibit licensed foster parents from discriminating against foster children based on sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as other personal characteristics,” the department told foster parents in a 2023 email included as an exhibit in the suit.
The lawsuit, filed in Vermont district court, asks a judge to strike down those DCF policies on LGBTQ+ discrimination. The revocation of the couples’ foster care licenses, according to the complaint, violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and amounts to discrimination against those with Christian beliefs.
“By categorically excluding the Wuotis and the Gantts from child welfare services because of their religious beliefs, the Mandate invidiously discriminates based on religion and treats the Wuotis and the Gantts worse than similarly situated persons who do not share their religious beliefs,” the complaint reads.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Aryka Radke’s name.
