Kentucky General Assembly enacted a budget rider letting state child-placement contractors refuse services on religious grounds

On April 13, 2022, Kentucky's General Assembly enacted House Bill 1, the 2022-2024 executive branch budget, delivering it to the Secretary of State as Acts Chapter 199. Item 13 of the act, titled "Children's Services Contractors," provides that no state contract for the use and benefit of the Department for Community Based Services shall interfere with a contractor's exercise of religion, and permits a contractor who cannot perform a contracted service because of religiously held beliefs, as outlined in KRS 446.350, to have the state substitute another licensed contractor instead.

The rider attaches a religious-refusal carve-out to the state's foster-care and adoption placement contracting authority — the same legal mechanism a number of states have used to let faith-based foster and adoption agencies decline to place children with same-sex couples or other families they object to on religious grounds. The provision was enacted through the routine budget process rather than as standalone legislation, embedding the exemption directly in the state's child-placement contracting code.