Equality Commission questions Catholic adoption agency victory

The decision to allow Britain’s last remaining Catholic adoption agency to retain its charitable status has been dismissed as “mistaken” by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), writes James Macintyre.

St Margaret’s Children and Family Care Society in Glasgow won an appeal in February after being told last year by the Office of the Scottish Charity regulator that it was breaking the 2010 Equality Act by prioritising married heterosexual couples. The dispute followed a complaint by the National Secular Society. The Scottish Charity Appeals Panel (Scap) decided in favour of the adoption agency, overturning the regulator’s ruling, leaving St Margaret’s able to continue to describe itself as a Catholic charity. Now, following another complaint from the National Secular Society, the commission said Scap’s ruling was ­“mistaken in its understanding of direct and indirect discrimination” and “not easy to ­follow”.

The EHRC highlighted Scap’s finding, based on the agency’s evidence, that it would “[in] principle” consider an application for adoption from “a couple in a civil partnership”. The commission said it has “written to St Margaret’s advising it to ensure that its published policies and practices properly reflect its stated position that adoption applications from couples in civil partnerships will be considered in the same way as those from married couples; and to ensure that such applications are indeed considered equally”. This would “give gay couples wishing to adopt the confidence that they will be treated without unlawful discrimination,” the EHRC said. Legal experts said that St Margaret’s had won its appeal by stressing that it would, in theory, consider couples in civil partnerships as potential adoptive parents. However, the agency also stated that it would give preference to heterosexual couples who had been married for at least two years. Another Catholic adoption agency, Catholic Care in Leeds, had tried instead to amend its constitution to say that it would provide adoption services only to heterosexual couples after equality legislation was passed. This strategy failed and Catholic Care finally lost its court battle in 2012.