Legal Updates

A children’s guardian appointed in care proceedings opposed a local authority care plan to place a child for adoption with a Jewish couple, and sought judicial review of the decision to accept the recommendation of the adoption panel. She argued that the child, who was born to secular parents with a Jewish, Muslim and Catholic background, should go to a secular home, suggesting that the chosen home was 'too Jewish'.

The child was Jewish under rabbinical law, by descent through the mother, but was probably also regarded as entirely Muslim under that faith's law of patrilineal descent. Approving the plan for adoption by the chosen couple, Mr. Justice Wilson regarded the guardian’s objections as ‘inflexible and doctrinaire’. He noted that they had links with the Turkish Muslim and Roman Catholic heritage, and would be likely to make devoted, wise, reliable and sensitive parents for the child, well aware of her complex ethnic and religious identity and committed to promoting it, rather than attempting to submerge it within their own.

Comment: The guardian’s application was misconceived on several counts. It is not possible to make precise matches; to try to rule out adopters on the grounds that a child should have a more secular upbringing, suggests a negative attitude towards religion. Secondly there would have to be an overwhelming case for the guardian to have good reason to second guess an adoption panel. Thirdly even if the guardian was correct, the opposition to the care plan could have been raised in the care proceedings without resort to judicial review.

Richard White

White and Sherwin Solicitors