Supreme Court Reverses Decision Barring Lesbian From Seeing Adopted Children
The United States Supreme Court ruled that a lesbian parent who was not the birth mother of their children cannot be denied visitation rights and adoption.
In a decision rendered Monday morning, the highest court in the land reversed a decision from the Alabama Supreme Court granting the birth mother the right to bar her former partner from adopting or visiting their children.
At legal issue was the Alabama court's refusal to recognize a Georgia order allowing the non-birth mother to adopt the children.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"The Georgia judgment appears on its face to have been issued by a court with jurisdiction, and there is no established Georgia law to the contrary. It follows that the Alabama Supreme Court erred in refusing to grant that judgment full faith and credit," read the Per Curiam ruling.
"The petition for writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment of the Alabama Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion."
Known as V.L. v. E.L., 15-648, the case centered around a lesbian couple who entered a relationship in 1995 and broke up in 2011.
"Before their breakup, one partner bore three children; the other formally adopted them in Georgia. The Alabama residents went to Georgia because they had been told Atlanta-area courts would be more receptive than judges in Alabama," reported the Associated Press.
"Alabama courts got involved when the birth mother tried to prevent her former partner from regular visits with the children. The Alabama Supreme Court sided with the birth mother in refusing to recognize the other woman as a parent and declaring the adoption invalid under Georgia law."
V.L., the non-biological mother, received legal representation from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which argued that the Alabama high court's decision was "unprecedented."
"Before this ruling, no state supreme court in the country had refused to recognize a same-sex parent's adoption from another state — or any out-of-state adoption — based on a disagreement with how the court issuing the adoption interpreted its own adoption laws," stated the NCLR.
Last December the Supreme Court granted an emergency order for V.L. to be allowed to visit her children during the case.
While the Monday decision was not considered a landmark ruling per se, some including Cristian Farias of the Huffington Post reported that it appears to be an extension of the 5-4 ruling last summer gay marriage nationwide.
"The ruling did not cite anywhere last summer's blockbuster decision finding that gay couples have a constitutional right to marry," wrote Farias. "But many observers saw it as an outgrowth of it, given that it implied the parental rights of a lesbian couple."
