Oregon Woman Sues State for Rejecting Adoption Application over Opposition to Child Gender Transition

Jessica Bates was driving to work in southeast Oregon when she heard a Christian radio broadcast that, she said, caused a “really strong nudge in my spirit.”

It was the story of a single dad who had adopted a child. Bates, a single mother of five, felt a calling from God to do the same. It was, she said, a four-word message: Those Are My Children.

“It was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t see this coming,” she said, “but I feel like I need to do something.”

But while Bates’s Christian faith is the reason she felt called to adopt in the first place, that same faith is the reason she is not being allowed to, according to a lawsuit filed Monday against leaders of Oregon’s Department of Human Services in federal court.

According to the lawsuit, state officials denied Bates’s application to adopt, not because of a lack of financial resources or any history of abuse or neglect, but because she acknowledged that her Christian faith informs her that gender and sex aren’t a choice. She was also denied because she said she would be unwilling to use pronouns that don’t align with a child’s sex or to take a child to an appointment to receive cross-sex hormone treatments.

Bates and her lawyers argue that the state’s adoption rules and regulations, specifically around mandated beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity, clearly violate Bates’s First Amendment rights to free speech and to freely exercise her religion.

“Pronouns and words that you use, those carry a message,” said ADF lawyer Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse. “In this case, they’re forcing her to affirm the message that you can choose your gender, and that gender can be different from your biological sex, which violates her religious beliefs, but it also compels her to speak a message that she disagrees with.”

“They’re putting Jessica to a choice: abandon your faith if you want to adopt children, or forgo even having the opportunity to receive a child in your home,” Widmalm-Delphonse added.

National Review has reached out to the Oregon Department of Human Services for a response to Bates’s claims.

Bates, a widow and an ultrasound technician at a hospital in Ontario, Ore., already has five biological children, ages 10 to 17, with her deceased husband, David.

She became a widow in January 2017, when a man who had recently been released from a state hospital abducted his wife, fled from police in a pickup, and crashed into their car while she and her husband were driving to work, according to the lawsuit. David Bates died at the scene. Jessica suffered a concussion, broken bones, and a collapsed lung.

The couple’s youngest child had just turned four at the time.

Bates, who attends a nondenominational church and reads the Bible every day, credited her strong Christian faith and a “wonderful support system” for helping her to persevere. While many people would likely be overwhelmed by the task of raising five kids as a single parent, Bates said her “one day at a time” philosophy has helped as well.

“That’s been part of what’s helped me get through losing my husband, too, is just one day at a time,” she told National Review. “Each day has enough worry of its own. Just focus on just today.”

Bates said she heard the Christian radio broadcast inspiring her to adopt a couple of years ago. She began the process in March 2022. She filled out forms and paperwork, provided references, her work history, financial information, and was fingerprinted. Then she signed up for Resource and Adoptive Family, or RAFT training, which she took over the summer.

Bates said she’s seeking to adopt a pair of siblings under age 9, hoping that adopting two children would lead to each child feeling less alone or isolated. She said she regularly has a house full of kids, and she doesn’t believe adding two more would be overwhelming.

While her father has expressed some concerns about Bates stretching herself too thin, she said she never heard any similar concerns from the state.

“The state never balked about anything to do with my situation,” she said.

But state adoption officials did balk when Bates raised some concerns about her RAFT training, specifically around sexual orientation and gender identity beliefs.

According to state guidelines, prospective adoptive or foster parents must “respect, accept, support” a variety of things about a child, including the child’s race, cultural identities, and spiritual beliefs, but also the child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.

According to the lawsuit, the state’s handout materials include examples of behavior the state expects of prospective parents, including: displaying “symbols indicating an LGBTQ-affirming environment,” including the rainbow flag and a pink triangle; displaying “pictures and posters of diverse people who are known to be LGBTQI2-S … and families with same-sex parents”; using “language that they [the child] use to express their sexual and gender identity”; and participating in “LGBTQ community activities,” including taking them to Pride parades.

An instructor also explained during class that adoptive parents must use a child’s stated pronouns and affirm a child’s gender identity if it doesn’t align with their sex, the lawsuit says.

Bates had concerns that her faith didn’t align with some of the requirements, and she emailed a state adoption official about it. She wrote that she could not affirm a child’s belief that his or her gender identity and pronouns don’t match with his or her biological sex.

“I don’t know how many children there are out there under the age of 9 who fall into this category (and to me it’s kind of crazy that society is wanting to get kids thinking about this stuff at such young ages; I think we should let them keep their innocence), so this may not even be an issue,” she wrote. “I have no problem loving them and accepting them as they are, but I would not encourage them in this behavior. I believe God gives us our gender/sex and it’s not something we get to choose.”

In a follow-up conversation with a state adoption official, Bates was asked, in a hypothetical situation, if she would take a child to an appointment to receive cross-sex hormone shots to facilitate a gender transition. She responded that she would consider that child abuse.

In September, Bates received a call informing her that her stance on LGBTQ issues did not comply with RAFT training or state regulations, and she was disqualified from adopting.

Bates said she questioned why she couldn’t simply be paired with young children who don’t struggle with their gender identity. “She kind of just said, ‘No, that’s not the thing, because even if we do adopt a couple of kids like that to you, in theory they may later on decide, I want to transition, and you’re not going to be supportive,’” Bates explained.

Bates said there is no option to even be essentially neutral regarding transgender affirmation. “You have to support it,” she said.

Bates received an official denial letter in November noting her religious objections.

“After they denied her, they even told her that if she changed her mind [on these LGBTQ issues] she could sort of pick up the application and likely continue,” Widmalm-Delphonse said.

But Bates said she has no intention of changing her mind. She said she considered simply telling state officials what they wanted to hear, but decided against it.

“Honestly, I was so upset by their policy, and that that was the reason they were going to deny me, that I guess I was ready to fight it in a bigger way,” she said.

Widmalm-Delphonse said Oregon’s regulations don’t just disqualify Bates, but also seemingly exclude people from a variety of common faith communities from being prospective adoptive or foster parents. He noted that “Jessica’s religious beliefs are not uncommon.”

Widmalm-Delphonse said the state makes exceptions all the time on a variety of issues to ensure children are placed in an accommodating home. “A family that hunts need not give up meat eating because some children are vegans. And Jews need not accommodate foreign gods because some children desire a home with a Hindu shrine,” the lawsuit states.

“It’s only when people have views on sexual orientation and gender identity that disagree with the state’s views that Oregon has a problem and excludes people,” Widmalm-Delphonse said.

Bates hopes to be allowed to continue with the adoption process while the legal challenge plays out. She said she is committed to adopting locally.

“I am willing to be patient,” Bates said. “My prayer is really that Oregon will change its policy.”