A Texas law professor and her wife tried becoming foster parents for refugee children, but a Catholic child welfare charity turned them away because the lesbian couple didn't “mirror the Holy Family,” said a new lawsuit.

Fatma Marouf, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law, and her wife Bryn Esplin, a Texas A&M bioethics professor, were married in 2015 and attempted unsuccessfully to have a child through reproductive technology, their lawsuit said. They became interested in becoming foster parents for a refugee child and went through an application process with Catholic Charities of Fort Worth—an agency that Marouf knew about through her immigration law work as director of Texas A&M's Immigrant Rights Clinic.

Donna Springer, a board member for Catholic Charities, told them foster parents must “mirror the holy family,” and that they didn't qualify to foster a child, alleged the Feb. 20 complaint in Marouf v. Azar, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Marouf reported to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees refugee children welfare programs, that Catholic Charities had discriminated against her and her wife because they're a same-sex couple. She never heard back about what happened.

Now the couple is suing multiple federal officials and agencies responsible for the refugee children programs, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which subcontracts with Catholic Charities of Fort Worth, for violating their constitutional rights. The plaintiffs alleged that the government is using taxpayer dollars to unlawfully fund the Catholic nonprofits for services for unaccompanied refugee children, in a way that unlawfully discriminates against same-sex couples who want to be foster and adoptive parents.

“The organizations use religious doctrine regarding same-sex relationships to exclude such couples categorically from applying to be foster parents,” said the complaint.

Marouf didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Her attorney, Jessica Lynn Ellsworth of Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C., declined to comment. The plaintiffs are also represented by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc.

Heather Reynolds, president and CEO of Catholic Charities of Fort Worth, didn't immediately respond to a call seeking comment.

The complaint noted that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement runs welfare programs for unaccompanied refugee children, and it awards grants and enters cooperative agreements with child welfare organizations—some religious—to perform services for the children. However, the religious groups must abide by federal law, and the government must ensure that religious groups don't discriminate against foster parents based on sexual orientation or same-sex marriage.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is one of the main groups that administers the refugee children programs, winning millions of dollars in grants each year. Its grant applications have said its services can't contradict the teachings of the Catholic Church. It makes sure its sub-grantees do the same. The federal government doesn't have safeguards to make sure the charities aren't administering grants based on religious considerations, said the complaint.

The charity openly advocates parenting by opposite-sex couples, and against parenting by same-sex couples, said the complaint. The government knows about the charity's disfavor of same-sex relationships, yet still awarded taxpayer dollars to it based on “impermissible religious criteria,” the complaint said.

“There is no valid basis for the government to prefer different-sex couples over same-sex couples when considering or approving would-be foster or adoptive parents or making placement or adoption decisions,” the complaint said. “Children reared by lesbian or gay parents are just as likely to be well-adjusted as children of heterosexual parents.”

Angela Morris is a freelance reporter. Follow her on Twitter at @AMorrisReports