A Christian mom and widow has reached a settlement with the state of Oregon after being barred from adopting due to her religious beliefs. Jessica Bates is now free to continue the foster adoption after Oregon child-welfare officials agreed to a court order earlier this month. 

In March 2022, Bates started the process to give a child in foster care a home. Six months later, she received word that her application had been denied since she had told the Oregon foster care system she would not feel comfortable affirming gender dysphoria should a potential foster child placed under her care suffer from it. 

“In the training, the state wanted me to be willing to put Pride flags around the house. Or if a child should come into my care that didn’t identify as binary or whatnot, then I would need to affirm their identity, use their preferred pronouns, support this behavior even if it conflicted with my faith and what I hold to be true,” Bates said in a Wednesday interview with Fox News.

Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand that this questioning was inappropriate. “Jessica is a kind-hearted woman wanting to open her home and heart to children in need. Oregon officials never should have grilled her about her willingness to display Pride flags in her house or drive foster children to receive transgender hormone shots.”

In 2023, Bates filed a lawsuit with the Oregon Department of Human Services to fight the discrimination she’d experienced with representation from the Alliance Defending Freedom. “Every child deserves a loving home, and children suffer when the government excludes people of faith from foster care because of the state’s own ideological crusade,” ADF Senior Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse insisted in a statement.

“Oregon officials turned Jessica away just because of her common-sense belief that parents should help children become comfortable with who they are instead of pushing them down a path of confusion and medicalization,” he continued. “We believe this settlement is a win-win that protects constitutional rights and puts children’s interests first.”

Bates recalled a phone conversation with state officials when they asked if she would be comfortable helping facilitate sex-rejecting protocols for a child. “When I was on the phone call with them a few months later, they basically kind of set up the litmus test that, ‘OK, well, what if we place a child in your care who wants to transition from one sex to the other, and we want — we need you to take this child to hormone injection appointments. Would you be willing to do that?’” Bates shared. “And that was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back, because I absolutely would not be willing to do that.”

Bates, already a mother to five children, wanted to foster because she felt it was her calling. “As a widowed mom of five, I was surprised to feel God nudging me to adopt. I never dreamt it would lead to a years-long lawsuit when Oregon excluded me just because of my religious convictions about gender,” she said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in July 2025 that Bates could start the process to adopt from the Oregon state foster care system without compromising her religious convictions during the ongoing lawsuit. 

“It’s great to see the Oregon Department of Human Services finally relent after a years-long legal battle and agree that they cannot deny an adoption application on the basis of religious views, even religious views pertaining to transgenderism and LGBT issues which the Left still holds sacred,” Del Turco told TWS. “That was a grave injustice, and I hope that the state of Oregon, and other states, do not make this mistake again. This is an important win for religious freedom, and it’s also an important win for kids in the foster care system who need safe and loving homes.”