Earlier this month, legal watchdog Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against Massachusetts for revoking the license of one Christian foster care family and threatening that of another over their Christian convictions about gender and sexuality. According to the suit, two of the complainants, Nicholas and Audrey Jones, have learned the state plans to take away their 17-month-old foster daughter “only because they are Christians and cannot agree to sign the Foster Parent Agreement clause that requires them to violate their faith.”
“I think we hold pretty standard conservative Christian beliefs that God created male and female,” foster father Nicholas Jones told The Federalist, “and that trying to go between genders or transition between genders is going against what God has created.”
The Joneses have cared for seven foster children over the past two years, in both long and short-term placements. ADF also filed the complaint on behalf of Greg and Marianelly Schrock, who have cared for 28 children over their six years of foster care. The complaint alleges that Massachusetts would force the families to commit to “support and affirm” gender delusions should a child confused about his sexuality come into their care, and require foster parents “promise to use a child’s chosen pronouns, verbally affirm a child’s gender identity contrary to biological sex, and even encourage a child to medically transition.”
The Massachusetts Department of Children and Family (DCF) plans to revoke the Joneses’ license and remove the 17-month-old from their home due to their faith, the lawsuit says. The Schrocks’ foster license was already discontinued in June similarly “because of their Christian beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity,” according to the suit.
The Joneses’ decision to foster is deeply connected with their faith, though Audrey Jones told The Federalist that she also has a personal connection through family members adopted out of the foster care system. The Joneses said they first encountered “LGBT” content during their training to become foster parents. However, at the time, it was presented as informational, not obligatory.
“It’s a very high-level conversation from what I recall, and so it wasn’t ever presented to us that this is a policy or anything like that would be required of us,” Audrey Jones told The Federalist.
As detailed in the complaint, throughout their annual review in 2025, the Joneses were asked about their views on “LGBTQ issues” and how they would approach a foster child who identified as something other than his biological sex. The licensing agent shared a copy of the new Foster Parent Agreement and sent a series of questions on “LGBTQ issues.” When the Joneses told the department they could not sign the agreement, the licensing agent said their licensing “won’t work.”
“The Joneses believe that it is not ‘caring’ to encourage children to change their bodies to fit a perceived ‘gender identity.’ Such action goes against the fixed nature of the body and also reflects an unwise rejection of the commonly known principle that children need time to understand their personal identity,” the lawsuit reads. “The Joneses believe that true care of children helps children to embrace the goodness of God’s design of their body, not countermand it.”
Audrey told The Federalist that those at DCF with whom the Joneses have worked directly have been “fairly positive in trying to do what’s best for [the Joneses’ foster daughter], while also falling in the parameters of their workplace guidelines they have to follow.” She added, “Overall it’s been fairly neutral and somewhat supportive of our situation. Whether or not that means they can actually do anything about it is unknown.”
The lawsuit asks the court to declare that Massachusetts’ policy violates the families’ constitutional liberties of “free speech, free association, religious exercise, due process, and equal protection of the law.” It seeks to bar Massachusetts and its actors from enforcing the policy against the Joneses, the Shrocks, or other families with similar convictions desiring to foster or adopt.
The Joneses’ situation is not the first of its kind. For example, A 2023 report described a Catholic couple’s attempt to foster in Massachusetts. They were rejected over their beliefs about sexuality. Audrey Jones also told The Federalist that they are aware of other families facing the same decision. ADF Senior Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse also confirmed to The Federalist that ADF is in communication with several other families whose licensing is jeopardized by what he called “Massachusetts’ ideological litmus test.” He added that “that test has nothing to do with what’s in the best interest of children.”
Massachusetts has approximately 9,000 children in the foster care system and around 5,000 licensed foster homes. The lawsuit cites a 2023 NBC report that described the overwhelmed system scrambling to find places for children to spend the night, even renting homes or apartments and contracting staff to stay and supervise them. A 2024 Boston Globe article also flagged “concerning” “maltreatment” of children in the state’s foster system.
“Foster parents and adoptive parents, they don’t lose their constitutional rights just because they want to be part of the solution and help these children who are hurting,” Widmalm-Delphonse said.
The Massachusetts DCF, officials of which are named as defendants in the lawsuit, refused to go on the record when asked why they are perpetuating the foster care crisis by denying Christian families the opportunity to bring children into a loving home.
Audrey Jones told The Federalist that foster care is an important way for Christians to “love the orphans.” When it comes to doing so in Massachusetts, “we need to take a stand for our faith and to hold strong and to stand together with one another,” she said.
Catherine Gripp is a graduate of Arizona Christian University where she earned a degree in communication and a minor in political science. She writes for The Federalist as a reporting intern.
