LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled unanimously June 29 that the state’s child-welfare agency cannot ban gays from being foster parents. The ban had been the only one of its kind in the nation. The justices agreed with a lower court’s 2004 ruling that the policy, enacted by the Arkansas Child Welfare Agency Review Board, violates the Arkansas Constitution because the agency only has authority to protect the welfare of children, not to regulate “public morality.”
The ban, enacted in 1999, said foster children could not be placed in any home where a gay adult was present. A group of gay would-be foster parents, along with a heterosexual foster parent who has a gay son who sometimes lives with him, sued the agency with the help of civil-liberties groups. The courts rejected as baseless the state’s argument that being raised in a home with gay parents harms children. (TAB)
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