Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-123_g3bi.pdf
Page Number: 26

4 

FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment
ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

out by religious orders.9 

In the New World, religious groups continued to take the
lead.  The first known orphanage in what is now the United 
States  was  founded  by  an  order  of  Catholic  nuns  in  New 
Orleans around 1729.10  In the 1730s, the first two orphan-
ages  in  what  became  the  United  States  at  the  founding 
were  established  in  Georgia  by  Lutherans  and  by  Rev.
George  Whitefield,  a  leader  in  the  “First  Great  Awaken-
ing.”11
  In  the  late  18th  and  early  19th  centuries, 
Protestants and Catholics established orphanages in major 
cities.  One  of  the  first  orphanages  in  Philadelphia  was
founded by a Catholic priest in 1798.12  The Jewish Society
for the Relief of Orphans and Children of Indigent Parents 
began its work in Charleston in 1801.13 

During the latter part of the 19th century and continuing 
into the 20th century, the care of children was shifted from
orphanages  to  foster  families,14  but  for  many  years,  state 
and local government participation in this field was quite 
limited.  As one of Philadelphia’s amici puts it, “[i]nto the
early  twentieth  century,  the  care  of  orphaned  and  aban-
doned children in the United States remained largely in the
hands of private charitable and religious organizations.”15 
In later years, an influx of federal money16 spurred States 
—————— 

9 Ransel, Orphans and Foundlings, in 3 Encyclopedia of European So-

cial History 497, 498 (2001). 

10 T.  Hacsi,  Second  Home:  Orphan  Asylums  and  Poor  Families  in 

America 17 (1997). 

11 Id., at 17–18; F. Chapell, The Great Awakening of 1740, pp. 90–91

(1903). 

12 2 Encylopedia of the New American Nation 477 (2006); Hacsi, Second

Home, at 18. 

13 15 Encyclopaedia Judaica 485. 
14 2 Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood 639–640 (2004); Brief for 

Historians of Child Welfare as Amici Curiae 16–17. 

15 Brief for Annie E. Casey Foundation et al. as Amici Curiae 4–5. 
16 See Social Security Act, §521, 49 Stat. 627, 633; Social Security Act