Latest Case: New Hope Family Services, Inc. v. Poole (Civil Rights)

What Good Is a Treaty That Congress Can Simply Discard? Quite a Bit, as the Creek Nation’s Victory in the Supreme Court Shows

MICHAEL C. DORF

Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf comments on the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in McGirt v. Oklahoma, holding that a substantial portion of the state of Oklahoma is an Indian reservation of the Creek Nation. Dorf observes that the majority’s approach in McGirt makes it more likely that courts will find the existence of reservations for other tribes, but there could be collateral consequences in many other contexts.

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New Hope Family Services, Inc. v. Poole

Docket: 19-1715

Opinion Date: July 21, 2020

Judge: Reena Raggi

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Family Law

New Hope Family Services, a voluntary and privately funded Christian ministry devoted to providing adoption services, filed suit alleging that OCFS violated its First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by advising New Hope that it either had to change its policy of not recommending adoptions by unmarried or same-sex couples or close its operation. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim and denied New Hope's motion for a preliminary injunction as moot. The court held that the pleadings, viewed in the light most favorable to New Hope, state plausible claims under the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the Constitution because they (a) raise a plausible suspicion that OCFS acted with hostility towards New Hope because of the latter's religious beliefs, (b) plausibly allege that New Hope would be compelled to speak or associate in violation of those beliefs if the regulation in question were enforced, and (c) do not permit a court to conclude as a matter of law that New Hope's speech equates to government speech merely because New York State has authorized New Hope to provide adoption services. The court also held that this case is not analogous to Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 922 F.3d 140 (3d Cir. 2019), cert. granted, 140 S. Ct. 1104 (2020), now pending before the Supreme Court. Furthermore, because New Hope's Free Exercise and Free Speech claims should not have been dismissed, the court held that its motion for a preliminary injunction was not moot and should not have been denied on that ground. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's judgment insofar as it dismissed New Hope's Free Exercise and Free Speech claims, and vacated the judgment insofar as it denied New Hope's motion for a preliminary injunction. The court remanded for further proceedings.