Supreme Court likely to hand Christian right a win over LGBTQ rights - Vox

I've been warning of this case for some time. 

Despite its refusal to place foster children with same-sex couples is Philadelphia Catholic Social Services entitled to a City contract ?

Supreme Court likely to hand Christian right a win over LGBTQ rights - Vox
by Ian Millhiser February 25, 2020

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a hugely consequential case that could fundamentally change the rules governing when people with religious objections to a law may ignore that law.

Fulton asks whether religious organizations that contract with Philadelphia to help place foster children in homes have a First Amendment right to discriminate against same-sex couples. It is also the first case the Supreme Court will hear where a religious group claims the right to violate a ban on discrimination since Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation gave reliably conservative Republicans a majority on the Supreme Court.

The plaintiffs in Fulton include Catholic Social Services (CSS), an organization that used to contract with the city to help find foster placements for children but that effectively lost that contract after it refused to comply with the ban on discrimination. CSS claims it has a First Amendment right to continue to do business with the city even if it refuses to comply with the city’s anti-discrimination rules.

Fulton is a significant escalation from most of the Supreme Court’s previous cases asking when religious people may seek an exemption from the law. In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), for example, the Supreme Court considered whether the law could prevent a private business owner from discriminating against a same-sex couple (the Court ruled in favor of the business owner, but on narrow grounds).

Fulton, by contrast, is a case about government services. The city of Philadelphia decided to contract with private organizations to help it provide a public service — placement of children in foster homes. If the city chose to provide this service entirely in house, it could certainly refuse to discriminate against same-sex couples. The question in Fulton is whether the city loses much of its power to control its own public services when it contracts some of those services to religious entities.

A decision for the plaintiffs in Fulton, moreover, could have implications that stretch well beyond foster care. The Fulton case involves an especially sympathetic plaintiff: a Catholic organization that helps vulnerable children find homes. But if the Supreme Court rules in favor of that plaintiff, it could potentially establish that a wide range of government contractors, from social service providers to military contractors, may discriminate if the company’s owners claim a religious justification for that discrimination.---KEEP READING--