For the second year, Minnesota lawmakers have failed to pass legislation that would have enshrined dozens of rights for the state’s foster youth, disappointing supporters who have fought for its passage.
The Minnesota Foster Youth Bill of Rights, first introduced in April 2025, sought to codify roughly 60 protections for the state’s estimated 5,500 foster youth. The health, safety and basic needs entitlements included the right to privacy while talking to doctors and to be provided luggage instead of garbage bags when moving between homes.
Twenty-year-old Kaja Just, who grew up in the system, was among more than 100 foster youth and advocates supporting the bill. She called its failure to advance “devastating.”
The bill was pulled last month before it could reach the House floor. Author Rep. Jess Hanson, a Democrat, said her decision to do so was based on a concern that there wasn’t enough support among Republican lawmakers, some of whom had issues with language in the bill that supported LGBTQ+ foster youth.
Among other rights, the proposal would have allowed foster youth to decide when to disclose that they are LGBTQ+ and the right to age-appropriate education on sexual and reproductive health that reflect their gender identities.
Hanson said she was additionally concerned that a House floor debate on the bill would have led to “all of the heat” being directed at trans youth.
That was evident during a House committee discussion of the Foster Youth Bill of Rights in March. At the meeting the LGBTQ+ provisions were opposed by Renee Carlson, an attorney whose legal firm is representing plaintiffs in an ongoing federal lawsuit to bar a Minnesota transgender softball player from a high school team. Her nonprofit firm, True North Legal, focuses on cases involving religious freedoms.
Carlson critiqued one section in an earlier draft that was subsequently removed. That section would have required caregivers and foster parents to affirm foster youths’ gender identity and sexual orientation, and granted them the right to gender-affirming care support, “including counseling, medication, and other supportive services.”
Carlson indicated those provisions may turn off some potential foster parents.
“This language goes beyond addressing basic needs,” Carlson testified before the Children and Families Finance and Policy committee. “There’s a shortage of Minnesota foster families, and this bill would exacerbate the problem of long wait times and no placement for these youth.”
During the same hearing, Rep. Nolan West, the committee’s Republican co-chair, said he was supportive of a foster care bill of rights but was unsure whether the proposed language regarding LGBTQ+ youth would withstand a legal challenge.
Several states — including Washington, Vermont, Oregon and Massachusetts — have been sued in recent years over policies requiring foster parents to affirm children’s sexual orientation and gender identities, such as calling transgender or nonbinary youth by their preferred names and pronouns.
Religious would-be foster parents argue these licensing requirements infringe upon their constitutional rights to religious freedom. Increasingly, states are walking back those policies meant to protect LGBTQ+ youth from discrimination.
“I do have concerns about this getting struck down as we have had in other states,” West said.
LGBTQ+ protections are granted to foster youth in some other states, including Maine, California and Nevada, which guarantee freedom from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation under their bill of rights. Oregon grants young people the right to express their gender and sexual identities.
Hanson said despite the reservations that caused her to pull the Minnesota bill, she intends to bring it back for consideration during the 2027 legislative session — with proposed LGBTQ+ rights intact.
“The Foster Youth Bill of Rights is necessary to protect all foster youth, including and especially LGBTQ+ foster youth,’’ she told The Imprint in a statement released by her office. “I’ll continue to push for the strongest bill language possible until it is passed.”
Even so, the unraveling of momentum for the legislation has left foster youth advocates discouraged.
Former foster youth Just wasn’t sure what she was entitled to under Minnesota law as she moved through various placements during her teen years.
If a well-publicized bill of rights had existed when she was in foster care, Just said, she might have been able to stop group home staff from listening in on her therapy sessions or hovering nearby when she spoke with her caseworkers or friends.
“I would have blatantly known that what was happening wasn’t OK,” said Just, now a student at the University of Minnesota.
Osahon Akpata-Tanious, head of the nonprofit Foster Advocates, testified in support of the bill and believes it offered “the bare minimum’’ for young people in foster care. She’d felt confident that the proposal would eventually become law because many legislators had expressed support. She added that she was “in shock” over its demise this session. Some of the provisions in the bill of rights already exist in state law.
“The state is making it clear that they do not care about fosters if they’re not able to pass a consolidated document that just tells fosters what their rights are,” Akpata-Tanious said. “There are young people in care right now who do not know their rights. There are violations going on — violations of their safety, violations of their human dignity, their autonomy, and there’s no road map for recourse.”
The proposed Bill of Rights built upon federal law that requires that youth aged 14 and older be provided with a copy of their legal protections. If passed, the Minnesota legislation would have also required the state to inform those in government care about the Office of the Foster Youth Ombudsperson. The watchdog agency, which led advocacy efforts for the bill, is charged with fielding complaints about the mistreatment of foster youth.
Misty Coonce, Minnesota’s Ombudsperson for Foster Youth, said her office will consider whether to champion the effort again during the next legislative session. It backed a similar proposal in 2025 that also failed to progress.
In the meantime, she said, she plans to create a Foster Youth Bill of Rights handbook and a quick-look “pocket” booklet.
She called it “critical” that foster youth know what they are owed while they are in state care.
Sara Tiano contributed to this report.
