14. Department of Health and Human Services · Notable · Needs Congress
Pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act
Printed page 478 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“Additionally, Congress should pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act to ensure that providers and organizations cannot be subjected to discrimination for providing adoption and foster care services based on their beliefs about marriage.”
What has happened
- Attempted
No Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act has been introduced in the 119th Congress - a title search over the Corpus bill file returns nothing - so the legislative ladder in playbook 3b has not started. What moves this to `attempted` is the executive workaround: Executive Order 14359 section 4(a) of 2025-11-13 directs HHS, with the White House Faith Office and the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, to address State and local policies that prohibit participation in federally funded child-welfare programs on the basis of sincerely-held religious beliefs or moral convictions - the same protection the bill would put in statute, pursued administratively. Under playbook 3b an executive action that routes around a statute cannot exceed `attempted`, and here the target statute does not yet exist.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Searched: the titles of the bills we keep and search, for “Provider Inclusion” (0) and for “Child Welfare” (nothing on point); Federal Register full text since 2025-01-20 for “faith-based” with “child welfare” (5 documents, of which EO 14359 and the Head Start burden-reduction proposal are the only HHS or White House items).
- Boundary call: a reviewer who holds that an ask needing an act of Congress, with no bill at all, should stay at not started regardless of adjacent executive action would put this a rung lower. EO 14359 section 4 also carries #1325’s first event; the two asks are different (a statutory shield for providers versus restoring revoked grant-condition waivers) and each note says what its own Quote asked for.
- Action
- other
- Object
- Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act
- ID
- 1326