By Susan Brinkmann
Staff Journalist
The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to two unmarried men who tried unsuccessfully to force the state of Louisiana to change their adopted son’s birth certificate to show that he had two fathers.
Reuters is reporting that the case, which was closely watched by gay activists, involves Mickey Smith and Oren Adar who adopted a Louisiana-born infant in 2006. The couple, who were living in New York at the time, requested a new birth certificate from Louisiana’s state registrar showing that the boy had two fathers.
In Louisiana, even though adopted children can get new birth certificates with their adoptive parents names, the state only allows married couples to adopt child. Therefore, the registrar refused the request.
Smith and Adar sued claiming that the registrar’s decision denies full faith and credit to the New York adoption decree and violates their equal protection guarantees. However, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against them, stating that the couple could not force Louisiana to change the birth certificate when doing so goes against it’s own laws. The ruling was pivotal because it affirmed that states that allow same-sex marriage or same-sex adoption cannot force other state to enforce an out-of-state law that violates its own laws.
“This decision leaves adopted children and their parents vulnerable in their interactions with officials from other states,” said Kenneth D. Upton, a lawyer for Lambda Legal, a same-sex rights group that sued on behalf of the couple.
Upton says they will push for a change in Louisiana state policy “in order to stabilize and standardize respect for parent-child relationships for all adoptive children.”
However, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell considers the matter settled. “It is now settled that the U.S. Constitution does not compel Louisiana to change its own public records to conform to another state’s laws,” he said.
Pro-family groups are also applauding the decision. Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law called the decision a “big victory against the relentless efforts of activists to export same-sex unions to states that affirm the mother-father paradigm for family.”
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