On Thursday June 11, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder (R) signed legislation that would allow private adoption agencies to refuse adoption services to individuals based on religious grounds.
Critics of the bill are concerned that the legislation would permit faith-based and religiously affiliated foster and adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples, religious minorities, and single parents, while still receiving taxpayer money.
Democrats voiced their opposition to the bill before it was passed by the state Senate on Wednesday, emphasizing that the bill would allow adoption agencies to refuse placement of children with same-sex couples. Democrat lawmakers proposed several amendments to the bill that were rejected, including one that would have excluded agencies that receive more than $500,000 in state funding from being protected by the bill.
In the 2014-2015 budget year, $19.9 million state and federal funds went toward supporting adoption agencies, and nearly $10 million of the total went to faith-based agencies that will now be protected under the bill.
According to ACLU, Michigan has the fifth largest population of children waiting for adoption. The law will make it even more difficult for more than 13,000 children in the state’s adoption and foster care system to be placed into homes.
For more information, please see the these articles in the New York Times and Huffington Post