Recent controversies have swirled around whether Christians holding true to their deeply held religious beliefs can serve as foster and/or adoptive parents for children because of state-mandated gender ideology mandates.
However, the tide may be turning.
Since July 2025, a widow in Oregon prevailed in being allowed to adopt two siblings she cared for as a foster mother, two married couples in Massachusetts in December 2025, and most recently, another pair of husbands and wives in Vermont, in February 2026, successfully challenged policies denying them opportunities to continue caring for needy children solely due to their refusal to violate their Christian beliefs by complying with state gender policies inconsistent with their faiths.
All three of the disputed policies required prospective adoptive or foster families to accept and support the sexual orientations and gender identities of children officials placed in their homes, regardless of their religious beliefs.
This column reviews the most recent incident, the case from Vermont. The column then reflects on what these successes mean not just for religious freedom but for those seeking to put their Christian faith into practice.
Wutoi v. Winters
Beginning in 2014, two Christian pastors and their wives put their faith into practice by responding to Vermont’s “desperate” need for foster parents. The lead plaintiffs, Brian and Kaitlyn Wuoti, became foster parents in 2014, later adopting two brothers in their care. Michael and Rebecca Gantt, who became foster parents in 2016, specialized in caring for children born with drug dependencies or fetal alcohol syndrome, and subsequently adopted three children.
Yet, even though both couples had demonstrated records of success, Vermont officials refused to renew their licenses to serve as foster parents because the couples objected to the state’s 2020 policy Supporting and Affirming LGBT Children and Youth, seeing it as inconsistent with their Christian beliefs.
Represented by the highly successful Alliance Defending Freedom, “the world’s largest legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom” and related causes, the families filed suit in 2024 in Wuoti v. Winters. The parents sued on the basis that officials’ refusals to allow them to continue serving as foster parents for needy youngsters violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and speech by seeking to compel them to speak in manners inconsistent with their religious beliefs on matters involving gender and sexuality.
After the federal trial court in Vermont refused to allow the families to consolidate their suit with a similar case in which prospective foster parents also prevailed in challenging the “gender-affirming” policy, they appealed to the Second Circuit. Subsequently, on February 20, 2026, rather than render a judgment on the merits of the parental claims, the court, in dismissing the families’ claims, issued a brief four-page settlement agreement with an appendix, including a revised fostering policy.
The new policy, which officials agreed to abide by, focuses on caregiving capacity rather than beliefs and no longer requires “endorsement or affirmation of specific identities” or the “use of particular vocabulary, prescribed language, or preferred pronouns related to gender identity, sexual orientation, or identity expression.”
Moreover, officials rescinded the revocations of the applications of the Wuotis and Gantts, enabling them to serve as foster parents.
Discussion and analysis
Following the Second Circuit’s approval of the settlement agreement between the parties, the Gantts pointed out that “[t]here are more kids in the foster-care system than there are families to care for them,” an ongoing problem in Vermont, adding that “[o]ur focus throughout this case has been on the children who need stability and love above everything else. We’re overjoyed that Vermont is doing right by the children in the system.”
In light of the great needs of so many vulnerable, needy youngsters, the Wuotis, who had five children when officials revoked their licenses as foster parents in 2022, said that “common sense won out…[as] Vermont has changed its policy to put children’s interests above divisive ideologies,”
Insofar as so many needy children in Vermont (and nationally) lack stable and loving foster homes, it is nothing short of unconscionable that woke state officials there, as in Oregon and Massachusetts, placed ideology over the needs of these youngsters.
Of course, children experiencing gender dysphoria deserve love, compassion, and care. Even so, it is hardly in the best interests of the hundreds of thousands of children in the United States needing foster homes and permanent homes to refuse to place them with loving Christian families. It is especially unconscionable that officials in Vermont, just as in Oregon and Massachusetts, refused to place children with families that clearly succeeded in meeting the needs of such youngsters because they disagreed with ideologically motivated policies.
Wuoti stands out as the most recent stark reminder of the need for public officials, in particular, to respect both religious freedom and the rights of all parents, whether through birth, adoption, or fostering, to raise their children consistent with their deeply held religious beliefs.
As Vermont officials finally recognized, like their counterparts in Oregon and Massachusetts—albeit not without judicial intervention—parents have the right to be free from outside interference or influences by state officials, absent abuse or other circumstances clearly lacking in any of these controversies. Yet, as reflected in all three of these controversies, public officials were unwilling to respect religious freedom because they apparently do not understand, or do not care, that mutual tolerance and acceptance are supposed to be a two-way street and that even if they disagree with how parents are raising their children, people of faith retain their right to do so in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs.
Moving forward, officials should devise better screening mechanisms to identify children with gender dysphoria or related conditions, rather than imposing mandates that are inapplicable in many situations and could exclude people of faith. Implementing such an approach would help officials to place children with families better attuned to meeting their needs rather than impose blanket prohibitions on those whose beliefs prevent them from serving as foster parents due to their unwillingness to support or encourage certain ideas or behaviors.
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They call it “common sense”, but it seems to be the rarest commodity.
Ah, indeed. It seems that common sense has indeed become an uncommon virtue, no?
When I was a girl Vermont was a very normal farming state filled with normal people. In recent years its become over run with liberals from Massachusetts. They now vote their insanity in Vermont. From the deeply sick and sad state of the country for the last several years, especially under Biden, we can see the results of states being led by people with no sense of morality or normality, and political partisanship as their North Star. A seriously dangerous state of affairs. Their ideas and policies have been roundly discredited and yet people persist in voting them into office to do more damage. Well darlings, one day you will have to account for the harm you have done in putting them into office in the next world. Well, you get what you vote for.
So glad to see a rare win for sanity, no longer too usual from the judicial branch at any level.
I’m afraid it’s the same all over New England. Born and raised in Maine but refused to go back after retiring from the Army b/c the place is run as an insane asylum. Amazing how many people I meet down South who have fled NE, places their families had lived in for untold generations…
Friends from New England have echoed your comments.
Let’s hope this starts a new trend.
We need more two parent families and public support for parents. It makes no sense to look for ways to undermine what well-meaning parents are doing. Good to see the courts coming around.
Professor Russo’s lucid exposition once again clarifies a dispute over who has primary responsibility and decisive responsibility for the upbringing of children in foster care, the foster parents acting on their sincerely and deeply held moral and religious beliefs, or the State acting on its ideology of the hour. Foster parents 1 or 2 or 3, State 0.
Putting children’s needs first – See Katy Faust’s book, Them Before Us.
A victory for common sense indeed, and a welcome one. Interesting that the Second Circuit issued the settlement agreement instead of rendering a judgement on the merits of the claims. I hope & pray common sense continues to prevail on this issue in the courts, as many state officials cannot be relied upon to prioritize children’s welfare over their ideological whims.