Month: November 2020

Will Obergefell Survive The New Supreme Court?

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Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court

Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court?

This is the greatest concern / fear of many in the LGBTQ community.  From the moment we learned of the heartbreaking death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, this question became the most frequently asked by scholars, activists, lawyers and members of the LGBTQ community.  What started as a hypothetical question became real on Monday, November 23, 2020.Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court

What happened? 

The Attorney General for the state of Indiana petitioned The Supreme Court in the case of Box v. Henderson, which poses the question, “Does a married same-sex parent have the same rights as a heterosexual married parent in regards to the presumption of parentage which attaches to marriage?”  The presumption of parentage is the rule of law that creates a legal relationship between the spouse of a woman who gives birth to a child and the child to the spouse of the birth mother.  How does this effect the Obergefell decision, which made marriage equality the law of the land in June of 2015?  The answer to that question poses serious issues of equality and judicial conduct that we are just beginning to understand.

What did Obergefell say?

Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court?  First, we need to understand exactly what Obergefell said.  In the Obergefell decision, the court stated not only that all states must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, that other states must recognize same-sex marriage licenses and that same-sex couples are entitled to marriage, “on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.”  That means that all protections, including the marital presumption of parentage, shall redound to same-sex married couples. 

Judicial bias?

The arrival of Box v. Henderson at The. Supreme Court is questionable for a few reasons.  First, the case was last heard in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a conservative three judge panel unanimously upheld the protections conferred in Obergefell to the 8 plaintiff married couples who are the heart of this case.  But, they waited 3 years to issue an opinion.  The average time between when this court hears a case and when it issues its decision is 3 months.  If this case was handled in the normal time frame, it would have been before a Supreme Court that had already decided this issue twice before in favor of extending all marriage rights to same-sex couples.  But now the court make-up is different, which leads me to the second issue that raises concern: the current Supreme Court requested that the Indiana Attorney General make the Writ of Certiorari, the petition to hear the case, directly.  Why would a court that has twice decided an issue ask to rehear that same issue?

Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme CourtThe court first decided this issue in Obergefell, and then again in 2017 in the case, Pavan v. Smith.  In Pavan, the court held that states must issue birth certificates to same-sex couples in the same manner they issue them to opposite-sex couples.  This means that the presumption of parentage (once referred to as the presumption of paternity) would make the father of a child born to his wife, even if that child was conceived with donor sperm, the legal parent of that child.  The 8 plaintiff couples in the Box case are asking the court to have the presumption apply to their marriages the same way it applies to heterosexual married couples, even when there is not a biological connection between the spouse of the mother and the child. 

To answer the question, “will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court?”, we must look to the strained strategy of the Indiana Attorney General, Curtis Hill.  Hill is falsely declaring that a state should have the ability to acknowledge the, “biological distinction between males and females.”  He is inferring that because only a man and a woman can biologically have a child together, only an opposite-sex married couple should have the protections that the martial presumption of parentage applies.  Furthermore, one plaintiff couple in the Box case includes a woman who donated her egg to her partner who then gave birth.  Both parents are “related” to the child under the law. 

States rights

This insidious “state’s rights” approach gives the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the ones who asked for this case to be heard in the first place, the ability to drive a wedge directly into the heart of marriage equality.  If the conservative Supreme Court sides with Indiana in Box, it will allow other states the ability to make distinctions between same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage.  It would mandate that same-sex parents go through a costly and invasive adoption process to secure their legal right as a family.  What the court would fail to realize is that the children would be the victims of this strategy.  Leaving a child in legal limbo only serves to create insecurity in that child’s family. 

Will Obergefell survive the new Supreme Court?  We will soon get a clue.  The new Supreme Court recently heard the case of Fulton v. The City of Philadelphia, which asked whether, among other questions, the government violates the First Amendment by defining a religious agency’s ability to participate in the state sponsored foster-care system mandating the inclusion of same-sex couples as foster parents.  This religious liberty approach to equality, I fear, will be the first sign of the new Supreme Court’s willingness to strip the rights of same-sex couples away. 

What can we do?

If there is anything to learn from this potentially disturbing road that the court appears to be heading down, it is to fight at your local level to ensure that protections are in place and that equality in marriage is preserved.  Do everything you can now to prepare for the worst: get your estate plan in place, petition for a step-parent adoption or birth order if your state allows and start telling all of your friends and family about what is going on. While we may have thought that battle was a thing of the past, we are still warriors.  We have always had to fight to protect our relationships and families, we know how to do it. 

Anthony M. Brown, Esq. – www.timeforfamilies.com November 28, 2020

The post Will Obergefell Survive The New Supreme Court? appeared first on Time For Families.


Source: Time for Families

Indiana Asks the Supreme Court to Let It Strip Equal Parenting Rights From Same-Sex Parents

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Indiana strip equal parenting rights

The justices have shown interest in an Indiana case that could begin the rollback of marriage equality and Strip equal parenting rights from Same-Sex Parents

On Monday, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill asked the Supreme Court to strip equal parenting rights from same-sex parents. He did so at the request of the court, which is considering taking up his case. Hill implored the new conservative majority to rule that states may deny married same-sex couples the right to be recognized as parents of their own children. The case gives SCOTUS an opportunity to start chipping away at Obergefell v. Hodges by allowing states to withhold marital privileges from same-sex spouses. If the majority wants to begin eroding Obergefell, they will probably start here.Indiana strip equal parenting rights

What’s strange about this case, Box v. Henderson, is that it poses a question the Supreme Court has already answered—twice. The plaintiffs are eight married lesbian couples in Indiana who used a sperm donor to conceive. When a married opposite-sex couple uses a sperm donor, Indiana recognizes the birth mother’s husband as the child’s parent. When a married same-sex couple does the same thing, however, the state refuses to list the birth mother’s wife as the child’s parent. In both instances, the second parent has no biological connection to the child; Indiana’s decision to extend parental rights to the nonbiological husbands of birth mothers, but not the wives of birth mothers, is sheer discrimination.

On two different occasions, the Supreme Court prohibited this kind of mistreatment. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the court held that the Constitution entitles same-sex couples to marriage “on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.” Most courts understood that this requirement compelled them to provide the equal benefits to married same-sex parents. In Florida, for instance, a federal judge held that Obergefell “plainly requires” the state to list married lesbian couples as the parents of a child conceived with a sperm donor, since the state grants this right to married opposite-sex couples. (Florida’s Republican attorney general settled the case in apparent recognition that an appeal would be doomed.) When the Arkansas Supreme Court kept a birth mother’s wife off their child’s birth certificate, SCOTUS shot it down without even bothering to hear oral arguments. In 2017’s Pavan v. Smith, the court unequivocally ruled that states must issue birth certificates on equal terms to same-sex and opposite-sex couples. It announced a rule: If a state lists a birth mother’s husband as a parent despite his lack of biological connection, it must list a birth mother’s wife as a parent, too.

Slate.com by Mark Joseph Stern, November 24, 2020

Click here to read the entire article.

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Source: Time for Families

Kansas Supreme Court expands parental rights of same-sex couples

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KAnsas supreme court same-sex couples

Kansas Supreme Court expands parental rights of same-sex couples

The Kansas Supreme Court issued two decisions Friday with far-reaching implications for same-sex couples, finding that parenting intentions at the moment of a child’s birth are critical to establishing parental rights.KAnsas supreme court same-sex couples

Both cases involved birth mothers who conceived through artificial insemination and were fighting petitions by their former same-sex partners to establish parentage after their romantic relationships had fallen apart. In both cases, the women had not married and they did not have written or oral co-parenting agreements.

The court found that under the Kansas Parentage Act a woman needs only to show that she acknowledged maternity at the time of the child’s birth and show evidence that the birth mother consented at that time to share the care, custody and control of the child.

The cases — one from Butler County and the other from Crawford County — were sent back down to the lower courts for further proceedings consistent with the rulings.

“The court must avoid giving either party a veto after the arrangement has been put in place and into effect at the time of the child’s birth,” the state Supreme Court said. “Allowing unilateral action by either party to thwart the maternity of the other after a child has arrived and vital bonds with both have begun to form is unacceptable.”

Provisions in the Kansas Parentage Act support the idea that it is at the moment of birth when state law deems a child to have either one parent or two, the court said.

The court stopped short of requiring a formal contractual arrangement, but said a demand that each individual makes up her mind at the time of birth incentivizes stability for the child. It likened it to the existence of premeditation when a trigger is pulled, saying the evidence of what is in the mind of the person pulling it may come from words and actions before, during and after the event.

LJWorld.com, November 6, 2020 by Roxana Hegeman

Click here to read the entire article.

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Source: Time for Families