foster care – Overlawyered

Religious accommodation and LGBTQ rights

Walter Olson — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 04:05:27 +0000

Are religious exemptions to discrimination laws, in areas like foster care, adoption, higher education, and government contract compliance, an “assault on LGBTQ rights”? Cato has now reprinted my comments last month for a House Oversight Committee hearing on that subject. The hearing itself (at which I was not a witness) can be viewed here.

Tags: adoption, discrimination law, foster care, government contract compliance, religious liberty, sexual orientation

Religious accommodation and LGBTQ rights is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

March 4 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 10:59:28 +0000

Educated Canadian circles have politely indulged theories about how indigenous sovereignty is purer and more legitimate than so-called settler government. Ten thousand land acknowledgments later, comes the reckoning [J.J. McCullough, Washington Post] Read and marvel: “As lawyers and legal academics living and working on this part of Turtle Island now called Canada, we write to demand…” [Toronto Star; similarly, David Moscrop, Washington Post]
Plaintiff’s lawyers in talc case played footsie with Reuters reporters: “Judge Sanctions Simmons Hanly for ‘Frivolous’ Disclosure of Johnson & Johnson CEO’s Deposition” [Amanda Bronstad, New York Law Journal]
Bernie Sanders’ disastrous rent control plan [Cato Daily Podcast with Ryan Bourne and Caleb Brown] Housing construction unwelcome unless public? Vermont senator boosts opposition to East Boston plan to build mix of 10,000 market and affordable new homes on defunct racetrack [Christian Britschgi]
Happy to get a request from Pennsylvania to reprint and distribute my chapter on redistricting and gerrymandering, found on pp. 293-299 of the Cato Handbook for Policymakers (2017). If you’re interested in the topic, check it out;
Family courts deciding the future of a child commonly don’t take testimony from foster carers. Should that change? [Naomi Schaefer Riley/Real Clear Investigations, quotes me]
Supreme Court will not review Ninth Circuit ruling that Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits city of Boise from enforcing law against homeless encampments when there are insufficient beds available in shelters [Federalist Society teleforum and transcript with Andy Hessick and Carissa Hessick]

Tags: Bernie Sanders, Canada, foster care, Idaho, Indian tribes, Ninth Circuit, Pennsylvania, redistricting reform

March 4 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Discrimination law and religious exemption at the high court

Walter Olson — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 11:05:57 +0000

Two big stories yesterday at the Supreme Court about the much-contested crossroads of discrimination law and religious exemption. In one, the Court “agreed to review a challenge to Philadelphia’s policy of excluding Catholic Social Services from its foster care system because of its refusal to place children with same-sex couples.” It’s not quite the case some readers will expect, though:

Note that Philadelphia was enforcing a local ordinance of its own making; the case is thus on a very different footing than if it were, say, a challenge to the Obama-era regulations (which HHS has since proposed to rescind) that tried to arm-twist all states and cities into adopting policies like Philadelphia’s. In the HHS episode, it was the liberal side of the controversy that was trying to impose a uniform standard from coast to coast; in this case, it is some conservative religious groups that hope to do that. Scott Shackford has more in a piece at Reason quoting my views, as does the Christian Science Monitor in a piece last week.

In the other case, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, called on the Court to revisit a 1977 precedent in which it interpreted federal employment discrimination law so as not to require employers to accommodate workers’ religious beliefs if doing so would involve more than de minimis cost or disruption. Back then, it was mostly liberals who wanted a standard less favorable to employers than that; since then many liberals and conservatives have swapped places on the issue. The full piece is here.

Tags: foster care, Philadelphia, religious discrimination, religious liberty

Discrimination law and religious exemption at the high court is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

A podcast on the Indian Child Welfare Act

Walter Olson — Sun, 16 Feb 2020 17:01:07 +0000

I join Caleb Brown at the Cato Daily Podcast for a discussion of the constitutional and practical problems with the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and the challenge currently before the Fifth Circuit in Brackeen v. Bernhardt.

Tags: adoption, Child Protective Services, foster care, Indian tribes

A podcast on the Indian Child Welfare Act is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

No strings: feds won’t use funding leverage against religious social service agencies

Walter Olson — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 05:05:43 +0000

A new HHS plan to rescind LGBT bias rules would back the feds away from one of the most hotly contested frontiers of the culture wars, the role of religious agencies in foster care and adoption. I explain in a new Cato post.

Tags: adoption, foster care, religious liberty, sexual orientation

No strings: feds won’t use funding leverage against religious social service agencies is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Court to officials: do not insult religious believers (cont’d)

Walter Olson — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 15:58:37 +0000

If you missed my Wall Street Journal piece on how the Michigan foster care decision isn’t really much of a victory for religious accommodation, Cato now has posted an unpaywalled version. Earlier discussion here.

Tags: foster care, religious discrimination, WO writings

Court to officials: do not insult religious believers (cont’d) is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Courts to officials: do not insult religions

Walter Olson — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 09:55:55 +0000

A federal judge in Michigan has ruled for a Catholic foster-care program, but religious objectors may find it a victory built on sand. I’m in the online Wall Street Journal today with an opinion piece explaining why. Related on Judge Robert Jonker’s opinion in Buck v. Gordon, in which he rebuked Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel [Sue Ellen Browder, National Catholic Register] and on Fulton v. Philadelphia [Mark Rienzi](and mentions: New York Post, Kathryn Lopez/National Review)

Tags: adoption, foster care, Michigan, religious discrimination, religious liberty, WO writings

Courts to officials: do not insult religions is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

In the name of child welfare

Walter Olson — Sat, 05 Oct 2019 15:55:53 +0000

Three pending federal bills “call for increasing CPS [Child Protective Services] investigations of minor marks on children… The proposed bills should raise special concerns for families of children with rare medical conditions and disabilities” [Diane Redleaf] Argument: negotiations for kinship care in the shadow of threatened CPS proceedings amount to a parallel, hidden foster care system [Josh Gupta-Kagan, Stanford Law Review via Diane Redleaf] “Why Jailing Parents Who Can’t Pay Child Support Is Questionable Public Policy” [Hans Bader, FEE]

Tags: child abuse, Child Protective Services, child support, foster care, settlement

In the name of child welfare is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

How does one child end up with more than 100 foster care placements?

Walter Olson — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 16:57:11 +0000

Naomi Schaefer Riley explains at AEI.

Tags: foster care

How does one child end up with more than 100 foster care placements? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 6 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 10:59:10 +0000

Local crackdowns on home-sharing can do a lot of harm [Christina Sandefur, Federalist Society teleforum] Sandefur on laws banning working from home [Regulation mag, Cato Daily Podcast]
“Apparently the ad [about a 9-year-old daughter willing to do household chores for neighbors] generated multiple phone calls from paranoid neighbors thinking I was using my child as a slave,” and next thing the sheriff called [Lenore Skenazy; Woodinville, Wash.]
Seventh Circuit rules against “disparate impact” age discrimination claims for job applicants, and a Forbes columnist writes as if it had decided to abolish disparate treatment claims for them as well [my Twitter thread on botched coverage of Kleber v. CareFusion Corp.]
“The Law Merchant and Private Justice. A Conversation with Professor Barry Weingast” [Kleros]
“Disabilities Rights Group Files Lawsuit Against San Diego, Scooter Companies” [Rachel Kaufman, Next City]
Ideology vs. kid placements: “Some 440,000 kids are in foster care in the U.S.; if we shut down [theologically conservative] faith-based foster agencies, those children will have a much harder time finding homes.” [Naomi Schaefer Riley, City Journal, earlier here, here, etc.]

Tags: age discrimination, child protection, common law, disabled rights, foster care, hotels

February 6 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system