Politics

Supreme Court Overturns Alabama Ruling On Ga. Same-Sex Adoption

March 7th, 2016

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that denied a same-sex adoption by a Georgia couple.

The lesbian couple, identified only by the initials V.L. and E.L., were in a relationship for roughly 16 years and had raised three children together. E.L. gave birth to the children between 2002 and 2004, and three years later, the couple decided to give legal status to the children’s relationship with V.L. through adoption as a second parent.

A Georgia court approved the adoption of the children, but the couple later separated in Alabama. V.L. was awarded joint custody by a lower court, but the Alabama Supreme Court tossed that ruling, voiding the Georgia adoptions.

The Alabama court said Georgia law didn’t allow for same-sex adoption, and, therefore, Georgia courts had no right to grant it.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision.

“What the Supreme Court said was, ‘Look, Alabama, you’re wrong on Georgia law,’” said Atlanta family attorney Dennis Collard, a partner a Kessler & Solomiany Law.

Collard said the Supreme Court’s basis for overturning the Alabama ruling wasn’t about the genders of the parents, but rather states having to honor each other’s judicial decisions.

“Otherwise our society would completely fall apart,” Collard said. “If all those are not recognized by another state, we would essentially be like 50 countries.”

Second-parent adoptions allow another person who is not married to the legal parent of a child to adopt that child. The arrangement allows for the “first parent” to maintain their parental rights.

Collard and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which represented V.L. in the case, say the Supreme Court’s ruling this week cements adoptive rights not just for unmarried same-sex couples, but all second-adoptive parents.

“The Supreme Court’s reversal of Alabama’s unprecedented decision to void an adoption from another state is a victory not only for our client but for thousands of adopted families,” NCLR Family Law Director Cathy Sakimura said in a statement on the agency’s website. “No adoptive parent or child should have to face the uncertainty and loss of being separated years after their adoption just because another state’s court disagrees with the law that was applied in their adoption.”