Noah Feldman, Columnist

Religious Freedom Shouldn’t Be Freedom to Discriminate

Can a foster-care agency refuse to work with non-Protestant and gay parents? The answer ought to be no, but U.S. law is murky.

October 23, 2018 at 1:30 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

How far does it go?
Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images

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A South Carolina foster-care agency has asked the Trump administration to rule that it has a constitutional right to discriminate against non-Protestant and gay parents under the religious-freedom guarantee of the First Amendment.

Some evangelical Christians will be upset if the agency doesn’t get an exemption from anti-discrimination rules so that it can receive federal money. But other religious groups, not to mention the American Civil Liberties Union and gay-rights organizations, will probably sue if it does. The legal issues are complicated, and it isn’t clear who would win.