Fulton v City of Philadelphia (2021) was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with litigation over discrimination of local regulations based on the Free Exercise Clause and Establishment Clause of First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The specific case deals with a religious-backed foster care agency that was denied a new contract by the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania due to the agency's refusal to provide service to married same-sex couples on religious grounds.
In a unanimous judgment on June 17, 2021, the Court ruled that the city's refusal due to the agency's same-sex couple policy violated the Free Exercise Clause. The case was decided on narrow grounds outside of the Supreme Court's prior decision in Employment Division v Smith, which had previously ruled that neutral laws of general applicability could not be challenged for violating religious exemptions. Instead, in Fulton, the court ruled that services like foster care contracting were not public accommodations covered by Smith, and thus were subject to strict scrutiny review. Because the city allowed for exceptions to be made in its anti-discrimination policy for foster care certification, the Court deemed the city's policy to violate the foster case agency's free exercise of religious under Smith.
Background.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia runs the Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (CSS), which has operated a foster care agency in Philadelphia for over 100 years. The foster care agency had been registered with the city up through 2018.
The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article on March 13, 2018, which described the experience of a same-sex couple that went to an information session at Bethany Christian Service, which operated its own foster care service separate from CSS. At the session, the couple were told they would be wasting time because there was a policy for refusing to serve same-sex couples. In following up, the reporter discovered that CSS held a similar policy, and had spoken to the city's Department of Human Services, which oversaw regulating foster care services, to notify them of these issues. The Commissioner of Human Services for the city, Cynthia Figueroa, followed up on the report with both CSS and Bethany Christian Services to confirm its veracity towards discrimination against same-sex couples. Figueroa also reviewed the standard with other registered foster care agencies for the city, many also who were also run by religious organizations, but found none of the others had similar restrictions against same-sex couples. Within a few days of the article's publication, the city suspended CSS's contract; the Bethany Christian Service had been able to work a deal to accept foster care from same-sex couples to maintain theirs.
