U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York Judge Mae A. D’Agostino was appointed to the federal bench in 2011 by President Barack Obama. But that biographical detail did not prevent D’Agostino from delivering a decision protecting countless orphaned children.
In the case of New Hope Family Services, Inc. (NHFS) v. Sheila Poole, the Acting Commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services of New York, D’Agostino held that state officials cannot force NHFS to agree to adoptions of children in its care to couples who are either of the same sex or are unmarried.
New York officials had argued in the court that “the determinations made by New Hope in connection with the processing of adoption applications and placing children in adoptive families are government speech, which do not trigger First Amendment protections.”
In other words, forget the First Amendment, New Hope; your guaranteed freedom of religious expression and practice doesn’t apply in New York. That was a novel argument considering that NHFS is a private agency that accepts no government funding. That state officials ignored that crucial fact is indicative of their determination to impose the anti-Christian woke ideology even if doing so trashes the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious belief and practice.
Roger Brooks, the Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), who represents NHFS, explained the significance of D’Agostino’s decision:
The court’s decision is great news for children waiting to be adopted and for the parents partnering with New Hope Family Services to provide loving, stable homes. New Hope is a private religious ministry that doesn’t take a dime from the government. Shutting down an adoption provider for its religious beliefs — needlessly and unconstitutionally reducing the number of agencies willing to help —benefits no one, certainly not children.
Brooks added that:
New Hope’s faith-guided services don’t coerce anyone and do nothing to interfere with other adoption providers who have different beliefs about family and the best interests of children. The decision from the court simply allows New Hope to continue serving the community so that more kids find permanent homes, more adoptive parents welcome a new child, and more birth parents enjoy the exceptional support that New Hope has offered for decades. The state’s attempt to shutter New Hope did nothing other than violate core rights protected by the First Amendment—the freedom to speak what you believe and the freedom to practice the teachings of your faith.
The ADF is an Arizona-based public interest law firm that specializes in defending religious freedom. The firm has won more than a dozen important Supreme Court decisions since 2011 and describes itself as “the world’s largest legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life. We defend your most cherished liberties in Congress, state legislatures, and courtrooms across the country — all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.”
D’Agostino chided the New York officials because they tried to press the same argument despite a prior appeals court ruling that made clear they were quite simply wrong;
The judge noted that the New York officials offered the “declaration of Carol McCarthy … as establishing that ‘[t]here is no difference in how the state governs government authorized agencies and voluntary authorized agencies in the field of adoption’ and that the ‘laws, regulations[,] and policies that govern authorized [adoption] agencies … do not distinguish between them.”
The problem, according to D’Agostino, is that the New York officials point “to no authority holding that these factual allegations, even if true, are relevant considerations in identifying government speech. The Second Circuit has previously cautioned against extending the doctrine of government speech beyond its established precedents … and the Court declines to do so here without clear supporting authority.”
In other words, according to D’Agostino, regardless of whether NHFS agrees to adoptions of children by unmarried or same-sex couples, “the Court holds that none of New Hope’s expressive conduct or other speech constitutes government speech.”
That is a huge point because there are dozens of private adoption agencies operating on the basis of Christian beliefs that would have to be set aside if they were considered mere mouthpieces of government policy.
The First Amendment’s guarantees of religious freedom and practice — as well as its guarantees of freedom of speech, assembly, and petition — are permanent and unchanging. But if private entities are construed to be mere extensions of government policy, the Constitution isn’t worth the parchment on which it was written.
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