The John Lewis Every Child Deserves a Family Act (ECDFA), a federal bill that would prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ prospective parents and LGBTQ youth in foster care and adoption, has just been reintroduced in Congress for the eighth time. Might this be the time it passes?
What the ECDFA Is
The ECDFA, named for the civil rights leader and congressman who was an original co-sponsor the first six times it was introduced, was reintroduced Friday by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who said in a statement:
As states across the country attempt to pass anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, this bill will solidify protections for some of our most marginalized and vulnerable children and enable them to find loving homes. It will ensure that taxpayer-funded adoption service and foster care providers cannot engage in discrimination against children or potential parents. It will ban deeply damaging practices like conversion therapy and help place foster youth in safe and loving homes.
Representative Danny K. Davis, who leads companion legislation in the House (soon to be introduced), added:
Government has a unique responsibility to ensure that each and every child in foster care finds a loving, affirming family. The Every Child Deserves a Family Act promotes the best interests of children by increasing the number of foster and adoptive homes available to all children in foster care.
The bill, which has 42 original cosponsors in the Senate, not only prohibits discrimination against both prospective parents and youth in child services on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, and religion, but also bans conversion therapy in child services and requires affirming services that are respectful of a child’s identity including race, ethnicity, nationality, religious beliefs and spirituality, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, ability, and socioeconomic status.
The bill also directs the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to provide assistance to states, tribes, and agencies in improving services for LGBTQ foster youth, and to establish a National Resource Center to promote their “well-being, safety, permanency, stability, and family placement” through training, guidance, and more. Finally, the bill requires HHS to collect data on the sexual orientation and gender identity of foster children and foster and adoptive parents, and on whether family conflict related to the sexual orientation or gender identity of a youth was a factor in their removal from their family.
The ECDFA has teeth, too. Any child service provider receiving federal funds that fails to comply with it will have this funding stopped. Individuals who are impacted by violations of ECDFA may sue in federal court. And within three years of the bill’s enactment, the Government Accountability Office must conduct a study to assess states’ compliance.
Whitney Bunts, senior director of public policy at True Colors United, called the ECDFA “vital legislation” that “gives LGBTQ young people in the child welfare system hope and provides them a pathway to permanency, stability, and a safe and loving environment.”
Why the ECDFA Is Needed
More than 368,000 children are currently in foster care, with more than 100,000 waiting to be adopted. Nearly 20,000 are aging out each year without finding a permanent home, according to data cited in the bill.
LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in the foster care system by at least a factor of two; the numbers are even higher for transgender and nonbinary youth in particular. LGBTQ foster youth report twice the rate of poor treatment while in care versus non-LGBTQ foster youth.
Jaymes Black, president and CEO of Family Equality, explained that the legislation “would provide critical protections for the 1 in 3 youth in foster care who identify as LGBTQ+, families of origin, and countless LGBTQ+ individuals nationwide who wish to form their families through foster care and adoption.”
They added, “As LGBTQ+ individuals across the country, particularly trans and nonbinary youth, face an unprecedented level of attacks, it is important now more than ever that Congress acts to ensure our child welfare system supports and affirms all youth and does not let prejudice keep them from a safe and loving family.”
Additionally, the bill states, same-sex couples are seven times more likely to foster and adopt than different-sex couples, but may be less likely to keep trying if they encounter discrimination. Ensuring that they do not face discrimination will help more children of all identities to find homes.
As Linda Spears, president and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America, said, “Discrimination too often creates stress and leads to trauma in the lives of children, especially for those children and youth in foster care, who may not have the stable and loving family they deserve.” To ensure that LGBTQ foster children have the quality care they deserve requires “the broadest possible pool of foster and adoptive families.” This in turn means assessing applicants based on their ability to parent, “not on the basis of their gender identity or sexuality.”
Confronting Religious Bias, Protecting Religious Freedom
Fourteen states now allow religiously based discrimination against LGBTQ people and others in child services; all but two allow them to do so even if they receive taxpayer money. It’s important to stress what Jaymes Black noted at the 2021 ECDFA’s introduction in response to those who fear that the bill would force faith-based agencies to close, making it harder for children to find homes: “The problem is the shortage of families, not agencies” and “Most faith-based agencies do not wish to discriminate and will comply with the law.”
As I see it, the ECDFA actually helps protect religious freedom. By ensuring that prospective parents are not disqualified on the basis of religion (among other factors), the ECDFA preserves the founding principle of freedom of belief.
Additionally, the bill requires that “State assessments, planning, and counseling should connect children and youth for whom spirituality and religion are important with affirming, faith-based resources consistent with the faith of the child or youth.”
This is a bill that affirms religious freedom, not one that hinders it.
Action Steps
Currey Cook, senior counsel and Youth in Out-of-Home Care Project director at Lambda Legal, asserted, “Nothing could be more straightforward and more essential than ensuring that a system that is supposed to ensure children’s well-being is not perpetuating harm.”
Despite that essential nature, the ECDFA will need our help to move forward. Contact your senators today and ask them to support the John Lewis Every Child Deserves a Family Act. If you have a personal story about why the bill is important to you, please consider sharing that with them as well.
If your senators are among the original co-sponsors, please thank them for doing so: Senators Baldwin, Bennet, Blumenthal, Booker, Brown, Cantwell, Cardin, Carper, Casey, Coons, Cortez Masto, Duckworth, Durbin, Fetterman, Hickenlooper, Hirono, Kaine, Kelly, King, Klobuchar, Luján, Markey, Menendez, Merkley, Murphy, Murray, Ossoff, Padilla, Peters, Reed, Rosen, Sanders, Schatz, Shaheen, Smith, Stabenow, Van Hollen, Warren, Welch, Whitehouse, and Wyden.
