In a unanimous ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a decision by the Alabama Supreme Court to deny an unmarried lesbian woman the right to adopt three children she had been raising with her partner before the relationship ended; however the ruling was based more on the respect due to state law than on the issue of same-sex adoption.

According to Lyle Dennison of SCOTUS Blog, the Court ruling on the case of V.L. v. E.L. overturned an earlier decision by an Alabama state court to deny V.L. the right to adopt the children after the state of Georgia ruled that the adoption could go forward.

The two women, who lived together from 2002-04 but never married, established temporary residency in Georgia so that they could be granted joint custody of their three children which were produced via sperm donation. The adoption order was approved, but the couple soon split and E.L., who gave birth to the children and is a resident of Alabama, went to court to prove that the state of Georgia had mistakenly granted V.L. joint custody. E.L’s lawyers argued that "the Georgia court had no authority under Georgia law to award such an adoption, which is therefore void and not entitled to full faith and credit.”

The Alabama Supreme Court agreed, ruling that that before V.L. could adopt the children, E.L. would have had to give up her parental rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to say that what the Alabama Supreme Court was doing was reaching its own view of Georgia law in nullifying an adoption order issued in that state. The justices cited a provision in the Constitution’s Article IV which declares that “full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state”.

This means that if a state court has jurisdiction under its own laws to issue a decision, which the state of Georgia had in this case, then that decision is entitled to respect in the courts of other states.

Although LGBT activist groups are heralding this decision as a win for same-sex adoption, the case seems to be more about how states are to view the laws of other states – whether they be about same-sex adoption or any other issue - rather than on the merits of the practice of same-sex adoption.

“The fact that the Court, usually deeply divided on gay rights issues, decided the case by a unanimous vote suggested strongly that the Court had mainly viewed the case as turning on the constitutional duty of one state not to second-guess the court orders issued in another state in a valid use of the sister state court’s powers,” Dennison writes.

V.L.’s troubles are not yet over, however; she must now go back to state court to seek the right to access the children for visitation.

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