Tennessee court rules couple has the right to sue state after foster care agency denied them services because they are Jewish

(JTA) — A Jewish couple has grounds to sue the Tennessee Division of Youngsters’s Providers after a state-funded adoption and foster care company denied them companies as a result of they’re Jewish, a Tennessee appeals court docket dominated Thursday.

The choice is the newest improvement in a long-running battle that started in 2021, when Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram turned to the Holston United Methodist Residence for Youngsters in Greenville, Tennessee for foster guardian coaching. The couple hoped to foster, and later undertake, a baby.

In response to a lawsuit the couple filed final yr, the company declined to work with them as a result of they have been Jewish. A Tennessee state legislation handed in 2020 permits adoption companies to not place youngsters in houses that violate the companies’ “spiritual or ethical convictions or insurance policies.”

The couple was open about being Jewish, with Gabriel Rutan-Ram telling the Jewish Telegraphic Company final yr that “They might have seen the mezuzah on the door” in addition to a portray of the Western Wall in the home.

The lawsuit, which the Rutan-Rams filed with the help of Individuals United for Separation of Church and State, takes intention on the legislation, which was principally meant to exempt companies from working with same-sex {couples}. However later final yr, a three-judge panel dismissed their claims on technical grounds, because the Rutan-Rams have obtained state help in fostering a teenage woman, whom they’re introducing to Jewish life.

Thursday’s ruling reverses that call, with one other three-judge panel ruling that the couple has the best to sue as potential foster mother and father and as taxpayers, missing entry to the identical companies out there to Christians. Becoming a member of the Rutan-Rams of their lawsuit have been six different Tennessee taxpayers, 4 of them religion leaders, who objected to their tax {dollars} getting used to fund spiritual discrimination in foster care.

“Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram suffered outrageous discrimination as a result of they’re Jewish,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Individuals United mentioned in a press release. “This loving couple wished to assist a baby in want, solely to be instructed that they couldn’t get companies from a taxpayer-funded company as a result of they’re the fallacious faith.”

CORRECTION: This text and headline have been corrected to replicate that the couple is suing a state authorities company, not the adoption company that denied them companies.