Christian foster parents in Washington secured a settlement after the state demanded preferred pronouns that clashed with their faith, forcing licensing changes that protect religious belief.
Shane and Jennifer DeGross spent more than a decade opening their home to foster children. In 2022, when they tried to renew their license, Washington’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families had new rules on gender identity that they could not accept.
Fox News Digital reported the couple challenged those demands on religious freedom grounds and reached a settlement that revises foster care licensing rules. The fight turned on whether the state could force foster parents to affirm preferred names and pronouns even when that conflicted with a biblical view of sex and marriage.
Jennifer DeGross said the couple would love and care for any child placed with them. They drew a line at affirming ideas they believe Scripture rejects.
"While we agreed that we would love and care for any child in our home, they had specific things that we could not agree to as Christians."
Shane DeGross put the conflict in plain terms. The state’s views on gender identity and human sexuality, he said, clashed with the couple’s faith.
"Those views directly conflict with the biblical worldview of human sexuality. So, as Christians, we just couldn't accept that. Our allegiance is to God and the truth of Scripture. And we just couldn't abide by what they were requiring us to affirm."
That stance cost them. After the challenge, the state partially reinstated their license but limited the ages of children they could foster. Jennifer said a child who reached age 5 had to leave their home.
"We felt like even when they reinstated a partial license to us that they were still discriminating against us," she told reporters. Removing a child solely because of a birthday, she added, is not good for kids who need stability.
"If we had had a child for a couple of years, and then they have to be removed just because they turned or reached a certain age, it's definitely not in the interest of children," she said.
Just The News reported that the Department of Children, Youth, and Families agreed to a permanent injunction. The order bars the agency from denying or restricting a foster license solely because of a parent’s religious beliefs on marriage, gender, or sexual relationships.
The injunction also stops the agency from requiring foster parents to use prescribed words or language, including chosen pronouns, that express views on sexual orientation or gender identity inconsistent with sincerely held religious beliefs as a condition of licensure.
Those terms matter beyond one household. States that treat affirmation of gender ideology as a nonnegotiable licensing test shrink the pool of willing foster homes. Families who already open their doors then face a choice between conscience and compliance.
Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse said agencies must respect First Amendment rights of foster parents and of children in the system. Matching should happen after recruitment, not by screening out believers on the front end.
"So, states should be on notice from this settlement, as well as some of the other cases that we've seen like the Bates v. Pakseresht decision, that they have to respect First Amendment rights, they have to respect free speech rights, and the way you do that is you invite as many foster parents into the system as possible on the front end, and then you match at the back end according to children's individual needs or family's abilities, comfort level, things like that, which is what they've been doing for decades, and this settlement shows that they can continue doing that now."
He noted a new proposed regulation, WSR 26-20-103, now in public notice and comment. In part, he said, it would give foster parents like the DeGrosses a religious exemption from any rule requiring them to violate their beliefs on gender or sexuality.
Parallel fights over sex, speech, and government mandates keep landing in court. One recent example is a Korean spa asking the Supreme Court to protect its female-only policy from a Washington transgender mandate, another clash between state rules and private conviction in the same state.
In a news release on the settlement, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families praised the diversity of foster parents and kinship caregivers with different cultures, religious beliefs, and lived experience. The agency said it is grateful they open their doors and provide a loving home to children and youth in foster care.
DCYF Secretary Tana Senn framed the outcome as dual-purpose.
"This settlement agreement respects the religious beliefs of foster parents, while ensuring LGBTQIA+ youth are placed in an environment that is safe and supports their well-being."
That language still treats preferred-pronoun compliance as a child-welfare tool rather than a contested ideological demand. The DeGross case shows the cost of that approach when it collides with long-serving Christian homes: partial licenses, age cutoffs, and kids moved for reasons unrelated to neglect or abuse.
Shane DeGross called the result a win for both believers and children waiting for a bed.
"It's a great victory in the sense that more Christians can be available to love and care for foster kids without fear of being excluded because of their religious beliefs. It's a huge victory for kids that need a loving home."
Parents elsewhere are watching similar institutional pressure points. Connecticut Children’s Medical Center agreed to stop gender drugs for minors under a Justice Department deal, another case where a major institution stepped back from aggressive gender policy after legal and federal scrutiny.
Washington’s proposed regulation is not final. It is undergoing public notice and comment. The settlement and injunction, as described in reporting on the case, already constrain how DCYF can use speech and belief tests at the licensing door.
Widmalm-Delphonse’s point was operational, not abstract. For decades, agencies recruited widely and then matched children to homes based on needs and family capacity. Conditioning a license on pronoun compliance reverses that order. It turns a scarce public resource, stable foster homes, into a loyalty test on contested claims about sex and identity.
School and sports disputes show the same pattern of state power meeting parental pushback. A Biden-appointed judge tossed a DOJ lawsuit over California’s transgender athlete policy on procedural grounds, leaving the underlying conflict over sex-based categories unresolved in that forum.
Foster care is not a classroom or a locker room. It is a system that depends on private families willing to take in children the state has already removed from their parents. When licensing rules demand speech that many Christians cannot give, the state does not expand care. It narrows who may provide it.
The DeGrosses’ age restriction made that concrete. A child aging into kindergarten became a reason for removal, not because the home failed, but because the license did. Jennifer’s objection was practical: multi-year attachments broken by a calendar rule tied to ideology, not safety.
Broader federal and state fights continue over how far gender policy can run. The Trump administration has urged the Supreme Court to allow discharging transgender service members before trial, part of a wider contest over whether institutions must treat gender identity as fixed policy rather than a disputed claim.
None of that erases the hard work foster parents do. It does explain why a settlement that restores a religious exemption and bars speech mandates is more than a private win for one couple. It is a check on agencies that confuse affirmation requirements with child protection.
Washington still must finish the rulemaking on WSR 26-20-103. Public comment will test whether the written exemption matches the injunction’s force. For now, the record shows a state that pressed pronoun compliance, limited a veteran foster home, and then agreed, under legal pressure, to stop denying full licenses solely over religious belief on marriage, gender, and sexuality.
Kids need homes more than they need forced speech codes. When states remember that order, more families of faith can show up, and stay.