Mike and Kitty Burke, who are being represented by religious liberty legal group Becket Law, said in their lawsuit that when they discovered they would not be able to have children of their own, they decided to become foster parents with the goal of eventually adopting children who needed a home. The couple said they spent months working with the state doing interviews, training, and inspection in order to qualify for the foster system.

At the end of the process, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) found that the Burkes were unfit to be foster parents for the state. The Burkes say the agency’s determination was based on their religious beliefs about gender and human sexuality.

[Becket Law does good work and does not take on frivolous cases. The Supreme Court will likely end up with this case at some point, but probably too late to help the Burkes in fostering children — and that means too late for some children to benefit from their loving care. This is what happens when states value ideological and cultural conformity over the needs of their people, and laughably in the name of “diversity.” — Ed]