Tashima Crudup, a practicing Muslim, was recently told by a Baltimore private screening agency that she was not fit to be a foster parent because she does not allow pork in her home. Crudup has contacted the ACLU, according to the Baltimore Sun, because she feels that she is being discriminated against on the basis of her religion.
The company, Contemporary Family Services, claim that the problem wasn’t the lack of pork in Crudup’s home – it was her “inflexibility” on the issue. For Crudup and her ACLU lawyers, this doesn’t seems like a strange argument, particularly since Crudup stated in her interview with the company that she didn’t have a problem with kids eating pork at school or on outings, she just doesn’t allow it in her home.
“I have a hard time believing [the company] denies every vegetarian or Orthodox Jewish person a foster care license,” Ajmel Quereshi, an attorney with the ACLU told the Baltimore Sun. ”But I do believe Mrs. Crudup was picked out here… and it led us to believe an anti-Muslim bias is playing a role in the decision.”
Whether the choice was religiously motivated or not, the chances are Contemporary Family Services is in the wrong in this case. According to the Maryland Department of Human Resources denying Crudup’s application based on her choice of food is also a violation of state law.
Crudup, a former foster child herself, has dreamed of providing other foster children with a loving home since she was a little girl. She cleared the initial screening process and completed 50 hours of training classes in order to get her license. The DHR, which oversees the foster care system in Maryland, notified Contemporary Family Services on Wednesday that it appeared to have violated several state laws. “The law does not permit the agency to make a determination solely on the type of food served in a home,” Nancy Lineman, a spokeswoman for DHR told the Sun. “If this was us, we would not disqualify someone from being a foster parent based on these circumstances.”
