Alabama: Ditch Dangerous Daycares!

A woman has been chased out of more than a dozen towns in Alabama for running dangerous and abusive daycare centers. Even though she hits children, neglects them and leaves them in dirty diapers for hours, no one can stop her from running a daycare center because she claims to be affiliated with a religion. In Alabama, religious daycares are exempt from most state safety regulations. Daycare owners like this woman are taking advantage of that fact by opening understaffed and unsafe centers. Now thousands of young children are attending these "religious" daycares. Sign this petition to call on Alabama legislators to protect vulnerable children by closing this religious exemption loophole.

Daycares exist in decrepit warehouses, next to porn shops and in fire hazard wrought buildings in Alabama. Many of them have uncovered sockets and children are unsupervised and within reach of dangerous chemicals. There are reports of babies left on the ground for hours, kids slipping on wet floors from holes in the ceiling leaking water, and unsafe food served. Also, employees don't have to go through a background check to work at religious daycare centers, making those centers a potential haven for predatory adults seeking access to children. The conditions at these centers are a parent's worst nightmare.

Over 900 daycares operate under the religious exemption law in Alabama. An investigation found that at least 80 daycare centers that were shut down due to extreme health and safety code violations reopened as "religious" daycare centers, sometimes only days later. But because they are now classified as religious daycare centers, state regulators can't do anything about it.