Vermont Forced Christian Foster Parents to Choose Their Faith or the Kids. It Just Folded.

Vermont had a rule on the books that should embarrass any state that calls itself a friend to children.

If you wanted to foster a child, you had to agree to affirm gender ideology and use preferred pronouns, even if you were never caring for a child who identified that way. No exceptions for conscience.

No room for a Christian who simply could not say what the state demanded.

That rule is now gone. On February 23, 2026, Alliance Defending Freedom announced that Vermont finalized a new policy clarifying that foster families do not have to abandon their religious beliefs or promote gender ideology to qualify as foster parents.

The change came after two Christian foster families fought back in court.

President Trump and First Lady Trump's vision for foster care is one family for every one child. Currently, there are two children for every available foster family because the Biden Administration was excluding an entire class of foster families due to their religious beliefs.… pic.twitter.com/S41QaETV0c

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) April 16, 2026

Alliance Defending Freedom explained the policy change and settlement this way:

VT abandons gender-ideology mandate, allows Christians and other religious families to care for foster children Published February 23, 2026 BURLINGTON, Vt., In a win for foster families and religious freedom, Vermont officials have finalized a new policy clarifying that foster families need not abandon their religious beliefs or promote gender ideology to qualify as foster parents. This comes after Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, representing two Christian foster families, appealed a lower court’s ruling in Wuoti v.

Winters to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The families argued that Vermont officials violated their First Amendment rights by requiring them to speak in contrast to their beliefs on gender and sexuality as a condition of being licensed to care for vulnerable children.

Inspired by their faith, the Wuoti and the Gantt families felt called to help meet Vermont’s “desperate”

need for foster families. Pastor Brian Wuoti and his wife, Katy, became foster parents in 2014 and adopted two brothers from foster care.

Pastor Bryan Gantt and his wife, Rebecca, became foster parents in 2016 and specialized in caring for children born with drug dependencies or with fetal alcohol syndrome. The Gantts have since adopted three children.

In spite of this track record of success, Vermont officials revoked their licenses in 2022 and 2024 because of their religious beliefs against gender ideology. As part of the settlement, Vermont has agreed to rescind the revocation decisions for the Wuoti and Gantt families and to abide by the new policy’s nondiscrimination guidelines moving forward.

Meet the people Vermont decided were unfit.

Pastor Brian Wuoti and his wife, Katy, became foster parents in 2014 and adopted two brothers out of foster care. Pastor Bryan Gantt and his wife, Rebecca, started fostering in 2016 and specialized in caring for children born with drug dependencies or fetal alcohol syndrome.

The Gantts adopted three children.

These are exactly the families the system says it is desperate for. People who take the hardest cases and stay.

Vermont revoked their licenses anyway, in 2022 and 2024, because of their religious beliefs against gender ideology.

ADF represented both families and appealed a lower court’s ruling in Wuoti v. Winters to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

The families argued that Vermont violated their First Amendment rights by forcing them to speak against their own convictions as a condition of caring for vulnerable kids.

Here is how ADF described the outcome.

The new policy says plainly that endorsing specific identities, or using prescribed language and preferred pronouns tied to gender identity or sexual orientation, is no longer a condition of licensure.

The families themselves kept the focus where it belongs.

And the Gantts pointed at the math that the old policy ignored.

That last line is the whole scandal in a sentence.

There are more children than there are homes. Vermont still chose to shrink the pool of willing families on purpose, by demanding agreement to a political creed before it would let anyone open a door.

EWTN News laid out just how aggressive the old guidelines were.

Read that again. You could be fostering a six-year-old with no connection to any of this, and the state still required you to sign off on the whole agenda or lose your license.

That is not child welfare. That is using kids who need homes as leverage to enforce ideological conformity on the adults who want to help them.

ADF Senior Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse said the obvious thing after the settlement.

The case also drew in the Trump administration, which has framed foster care around a simple goal of one family for every child.

We are grateful to @SecKennedy and @FLOTUS for their work on religious freedom in foster care.

Thanks to the support of our donors, we successfully represented the Wuotis and the Gantts in a case in Vermont. This led Vermont to overturn their gender ideology mandate for foster… https://t.co/UCxLU4ly0r

— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) April 16, 2026

This is the part the church should sit with.

Christians are commanded to care for orphans and the fatherless. James calls it pure religion.

For years Vermont effectively told the people most likely to answer that calling that their faith disqualified them.

And it took two pastors, two wives, a federal appeal, and more than a year and a half of litigation to get the state to admit that punishing believers does not help a single child find a bed.

The win matters beyond Vermont. When a state can compel your speech as the price of doing good, the cost is paid by the kids who never get placed.

The Wuotis and the Gantts did not ask to be exempt from caring for any child. They asked to keep caring for children without being forced to say things they do not believe.

Vermont finally agreed.

What do you think? Should a state ever be allowed to make Christian families choose between their faith and fostering a child in need?

Drop a comment and let us know.