La Moves To Bar Same-Sex Couples From Having Names On Birth Certificates

By 365gay Newscenter Staff
05.06.2009 3:20pm EDT

(Baton Rouge, Louisiana) The Louisiana legislature is moving forward with legislation that would bar the state from issuing birth certificates showing two people of the same sex as parents.

The House Health and Welfare Committee has voted 12-3 to send the bill to the full House for a vote. Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) supports the bill.

The measure grew out of a federal lawsuit brought by a gay couple who want their names on the birth certificate of their adopted son.

Oren Adar and Mickey Smith adopted their Louisiana-born son in 2006 in a New York court, where a judge issued an adoption decree.

When Smith attempted to get a new birth certificate for their child so he could add his son to his health insurance, the office of Louisiana State Registrar Darlene Smith told him that Louisiana does not recognize adoption by unmarried parents and so could not issue it.

Lambda Legal filed suit on behalf of Adar and Smith in October 2007, saying that the registrar was violating the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution by refusing to recognize the New York adoption. The Constitution holds that judgments and orders issued by a court in one state are legally binding in other states as well.

In December, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey in New Orleans ordered the state Office of Vital Records to put the names of both fathers on the amended birth certificate.

In his ruling, Zainey said failing to amend the birth certificate violated the U.S. Constitution. Zainey issued the ruling without holding a trial.

In April, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put a stay on the ruling to allow the state to appeal.

The 5th Circuit ordered legal briefs to be submitted in the case and the Appeals Court is expected to hear the case later this year.

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said that the case brings up complex constitutional questions and is likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has ruled previously that there “are some limitations upon the extent to which a state may be required by the full faith and credit clause to enforce even the judgment of another state in contravention of its own statutes or policy.”