Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2014 - Prohibits the federal government, and any state that receives federal funding for any program that provides child welfare services under part B (Child and Family Services) or part E (Federal Payments for Foster Care and Adoption Assistance) of title IV (Grants to States for Aid and Services to Needy Families with Children and for Child-Welfare Services) of the Social Security Act (SSA), from discriminating or taking an adverse action against a child welfare service provider that declines to provide, facilitate, or refer for a child welfare service that conflicts with the provider's sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.
Bars such prohibition from applying to SSA requirements that forbid state entities from denying or delaying adoption or foster care placements on the basis of an adoptive parent's or a child's race, color, or national origin.
Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to withhold 15% of the federal funds that a state receives for such programs if the state violates this Act.
Allows an aggrieved child welfare service provider to assert such an adverse action violation as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding and to obtain all appropriate relief (including declaratory relief, injunctive relief, compensatory damages, and reasonable attorney fees and costs).
[Congressional Bills 113th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 2706 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
113th CONGRESS
2d Session
S. 2706
To ensure that organizations with religious or moral convictions are
allowed to continue to provide services for children.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
July 30, 2014
Mr. Enzi introduced the following bill; which was read twice and
referred to the Committee on Finance
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To ensure that organizations with religious or moral convictions are
allowed to continue to provide services for children.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act
of 2014''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSES.
(a) Findings.--Congress finds the following:
(1) Child welfare service providers, both individuals and
organizations, have the inherent, fundamental, and inalienable
right to free exercise of religion protected by the United
States Constitution.
(2) The right to free exercise of religion for child
welfare service providers includes the freedom to refrain from
conduct that conflicts with their sincerely held religious
beliefs.
(3) Most States provide government-funded child welfare
services through various charitable, religious, and private
organizations.
(4) Religious organizations, in particular, have a lengthy
and distinguished history of providing child welfare services
that predates government involvement.
(5) Religious organizations have long been and should
continue contracting with and receiving grants from
governmental entities to provide child welfare services.
(6) Religious organizations cannot provide certain child
welfare services, such as foster-care or adoption placements,
without receiving a government contract, grant or license.
(7) Religious organizations display particular excellence
when providing child welfare services.
(8) Children and families benefit greatly from the child
welfare services provided by religious organizations.
(9) Governmental entities and officials administering
federally funded child welfare services in some States,
including Massachusetts, California, Illinois, and the District
of Columbia, have refused to contract with religious
organizations that are unable, due to sincerely held religious
beliefs or moral convictions, to provide a child welfare
service that conflicts, or under circumstances that conflict,
with those beliefs or convictions; and that refusal has forced
many religious organizations to end their long and
distinguished history of excellence in the provision of child
welfare services.
(10) Ensuring that religious organizations can continue to
provide child welfare services will benefit the children and
families that receive those federally funded services.
(11) States also provide government-funded child welfare
services through individual child welfare service providers
with varying religious and moral convictions.
(12) Many individual child welfare service providers
maintain sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions
that relate to their work and should not be forced to choose
between their livelihood and adherence to those beliefs or
convictions.
(13) Because governmental entities provide child welfare
services through many charitable, religious, and private
organizations, each with varying religious beliefs or moral
convictions, and through diverse individuals with varying
religious beliefs or moral convictions, the religiously
impelled inability of some religious organizations or
individuals to provide certain services will not have a
material effect on a person's ability to access federally
funded child welfare services.
(14) The activities of funding and administering these
child welfare services substantially affect interstate
commerce.
(15) Taking adverse actions against child welfare service
providers that are unable, due to their sincerely held
religious beliefs or moral convictions, to provide certain
services (or provide services under certain circumstances)
substantially affects interstate commerce.
(16) The provisions of this Act are remedial measures that
are congruent and proportional to protecting the constitutional
rights of child welfare service providers guaranteed under the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
(17) Congress has the authority to pass this Act pursuant
to its spending clause power, commerce clause power, and
enforcement power under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment
to the United States Constitution.
(b) Purposes.--The purposes of this Act are as follows:
(1) To prohibit governmental entities from discriminating
or taking an adverse action against a child welfare service
provider on the basis that the provider declines to provide a
child welfare service that conflicts, or under circumstances
that conflict, with the sincerely held religious beliefs or
moral convictions of the provider.
(2) To protect child welfare service providers' exercise of
religion and to ensure that governmental entities will not be
able to force those providers, either directly or indirectly,
to discontinue all or some of their child welfare services
because they decline to provide a child welfare service that
conflicts, or under circumstances that conflict, with their
sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.
(3) To provide relief to child welfare service providers
whose rights have been violated.
SEC. 3. DISCRIMINATION AND ADVERSE ACTIONS PROHIBITED.
(a) The Federal Government, and any State that receives federal
funding for any program that provides child welfare services under part
B or part E of title IV of the Social Security Act (and any
subdivision, office or department of such State) shall not discriminate
or take an adverse action against a child welfare service provider on
the basis that the provider has declined or will decline to provide,
facilitate, or refer for a child welfare service that conflicts with,
or under circumstances that conflict with, the provider's sincerely
held religious beliefs or moral convictions.
(b) Subsection (a) does not apply to conduct forbidden by paragraph
(18) of section 471(a) of such Act.
SEC. 4. FUNDS WITHHELD FOR VIOLATION.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall withhold from a
State 15 percent of the federal funds the State receives for a program
that provides child welfare services under part B or part E of title IV
of the Social Security Act if the State violates section 3 when
administering or disbursing funds under such program.
SEC. 5. PRIVATE RIGHT OF ACTION.
(a) A child welfare service provider aggrieved by a violation of
section 3 may assert that violation as a claim or defense in a judicial
proceeding and obtain all appropriate relief, including declaratory
relief, injunctive relief, and compensatory damages, with respect to
that violation.
(b) A child welfare service provider that prevails in an action by
establishing a violation of section 3 is entitled to recover reasonable
attorneys' fees and costs.
(c) By accepting or expending federal funds in connection with a
program that provides child welfare services under part B or part E of
title IV of the Social Security Act, a State waives its sovereign
immunity for any claim or defense that is raised under this section.
SEC. 6. SEVERABILITY.
If any provision of this Act, or any application of such provision
to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the
remainder of this Act and the application of the provision to any other
person or circumstance shall not be affected.
SEC. 7. EFFECTIVE DATE.
(a) The amendments made by this Act shall take effect on the 1st
day of the 1st fiscal year beginning on or after the date of the
enactment of this Act, and the withholding of funds authorized by
section 4 shall apply to payments under parts B and E of such Act for
calendar quarters beginning on or after such date.
(b) If legislation (other than legislation appropriating funds) is
required for a governmental entity to bring itself into compliance with
this Act, the governmental entity shall not be regarded as violating
this Act before the 1st day of the 1st calendar quarter beginning after
the first regular session of the legislative body that begins after the
date of the enactment of this Act. For purposes of the preceding
sentence, if the governmental entity has a 2-year legislative session,
each year of the session is deemed to be a separate regular session.
SEC. 8. DEFINITIONS.
The following definitions apply throughout this Act:
(1) The term ``child welfare service provider'' includes
organizations, corporations, groups, entities, or individuals
that provide or seek to provide, or that apply for or receive a
contract, subcontract, grant, or subgrant for the provision of,
child welfare services. The provider need not be engaged
exclusively in child welfare services to be considered a child
welfare service provider.
(2) The term ``child welfare services'' means social
services provided to or on behalf of children, including
assisting abused, neglected, or troubled children, counseling
children or parents, promoting foster parenting, providing
foster homes or temporary group shelters for children,
recruiting foster parents, placing children in foster homes,
licensing foster homes, promoting adoption, recruiting adoptive
parents, assisting adoptions, supporting adoptive families,
assisting kinship guardianships, assisting kinship caregivers,
providing family preservation services, providing family
support services, and providing time-limited family
reunification services.
(3) The term ``State'' includes any of the several States,
the District of Columbia, any commonwealth, territory or
possession of the United States, and any political subdivision
thereof.
(4) The terms ``funding'', ``funded'', or ``funds'' include
money paid pursuant to a contract, grant, voucher, or similar
means.
(5) The term ``adverse action'' includes, but is not
limited to, denying a child welfare service provider's
application for funding, refusing to renew the provider's
funding, canceling the provider's funding, declining to enter
into a contract with the provider, refusing to renew a contract
with the provider, canceling a contract with the provider,
declining to issue a license to the provider, refusing to renew
the provider's license, canceling the provider's license,
terminating the provider's employment, or any other adverse
action that materially alters the terms or conditions of the
provider's employment, funding, contract, or license.
<all>
Introduced in Senate
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance.
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