EXCLUSIVE: A married Vermont couple has reached a settlement with the state amid an ideological rift when their foster care license was revoked after they voiced personal reservations regarding transgender treatments for kids.
Melinda Antonucci, 45, and Casey Mathieu, 43, said the Vermont Department for Children and Families (DCF), made them take part in an LGBTQ+ training – as part of their license application – which discussed medical procedures for transgender children.
“Vermont tried to turn foster licensing into an ideological screening process—conditioning the ability to serve vulnerable children on compelled speech and mandatory adherence to the government’s preferred views,” said Josh Dixon, lead attorney for the Center for American Liberty, a civil liberties nonprofit which brought a lawsuit against DCF, told Fox News Digital.
“This settlement is a major win for constitutional rights and for kids who need safe, loving homes,” he added. “Vermont is restoring our clients’ license and adopting statewide guidance that puts the focus back where it belongs: on real-world caregiving and child safety — not political orthodoxy.”
Under the terms of the settlement, the couple will have their foster care license reinstated, and the state has agreed not to condition foster licensure on an applicant’s viewpoints, religious beliefs or compelled ideological speech.
The Christian couple, who have three children of their own, secured their license in January 2024 and fostered one child on an emergency basis for two weeks.
On Thursday, Antonucci praised the settlement as a win for religious and parental freedom.
“We became foster parents because we love children and wanted to help kids in need,” she said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The state tried to disqualify us because of our protected beliefs and because we wouldn’t say what the government wanted us to say.”
This settlement, she said, means “our family can continue serving foster youth, and it helps ensure other foster parents won’t be punished for speaking honestly or living out their faith.”
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The pair’s relationship with the DCF began to strain when Antonucci posted a link on her personal Facebook page to a petition advocating for parental rights in the Essex Westford School District.
The petition called on the school district to recognize parents’ constitutional right to raise their children and to inform parents prior to assisting their child’s social transition to a new gender identity at school.
Soon after, a DCF employee called Antonucci and said her support for the petition was concerning because all foster homes must “affirm” transgender-identifying children. On their license application, the couple was asked about their views on trans kids and if they were willing to foster an LGBTQ+ child.
They said that they would but were hesitant about facilitating any medical treatment or procedures.
Antonucci told DCF that she was willing to foster a trans child, but that she would not facilitate a child’s medical transition or require her son to use the child’s preferred name and pronouns, a 2024 letter from the Liberty Center to DCF states.
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Based on the phone conversation, the licensor told Antonucci that the couple would most likely have their license pulled, she said. In the email to the couple, DCF said that it did not know how it could move forward with their fostering, “given the inability to predict any foster child’s journey with their own identity.”
DCF told the couple they could opt to pull the license, or DCF would need to formally deny it. The couple told DCF they were not willing to voluntarily close their license and that if the department wished to revoke it, it needed to provide them with a formal notification.
The lawsuit alleged the DCF policy violated the couple’s freedom of speech and religion.
Moving forward, DCF won’t place a transgender-identifying child in a home where the foster parents won’t agree to social transition children on the terms demanded by the state, but they won’t have their license revoked and will still be eligible to foster other children.
The couple want to foster children, Dixon said, noting that they just wanted to provide stable homes for children.
“They signed up to do this from the outset as, sort of, a labor of love, and they’ve been precluded from doing it,” he said “They’re very happy that their license is going to be restored, and they’re going to be able to foster children again.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Vermont DCF.
Dixon noted that the policies concerning the affirmation of transgender ideology are being challenged in a number of blue states.
“There are other lawsuits surrounding this that, hopefully, are going to go the right way like this one has,” he said.
