Gay adoption before Fla. Legislature, courts
The state Legislature is faced with a bill aimed at overturning the state’s 1977 ban on gay adoption, and Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals must resolve a lawsuit over the issue stemming from Gill’s case. The case is likely to move on to the Florida Supreme Court.
The court case will likely resolve questions posed by gay rights advocates before the bill does.
The legislation is expected to die without coming to a vote before the Legislature adjourns next week.
“This year the bill is not going to be going anywhere to be honest with you,” said the sponsor, Sen. Nan Rich, D-Sunrise. “The best chance to get a change in this state … will be with Gill.”
The high court will hold preliminary hearings soon on Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman’s ruling that allowed Gill to adopt the boys in November. Her ruling said the ban violates equal protection rights for the children and their prospective gay parents.
See Gay adoption before Fla. Legislature, courts
MiamiHerald.com
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/gay-adoption-…
Supreme Court takes up dispute over endorsement of gay adoption by Florida Bar’s family-law section
State Supreme Court justices critically questioned both sides today in a dispute over whether the family-law section of the Florida Bar should be allowed to legally endorse adoption for gay couples. A circuit judge in Miami threw out the statute banning adoption by gays but the case is headed for the Supreme Court. The Bar itself has not taken a position but its family-law section sought to file a “friend of the court” brief supporting the circuit court ruling. Lawyers supporting the statute objected — saying the Bar shouldn’t be using compulsory dues paid by all lawyers to fight on one side of a controversial issue.
Tallahassee attorney Barry Richard said the family section is a voluntary association and that its lawyer members have a right to take positions. But Matt Staver, representing the conservative Liberty Counsel, said Bar rules forbid lobbying on either side of a hot topic.
The attorneys argued over the distinction between lobbying the Legislature and filing a legal brief in court. They also disagreed about whether a voluntary section of the bar is restrained by the same rules applying to the full bar.
Chief Justices Peggy Quince and Justices Barbara Pariente, Fred Lewis, Charles Canady and Ricky Polston pressed Richard and Staver on the legal distinctions.
Pariente said that if the prohibition on pursuing controversial, divisive issues had been interpreted as a ban 50 years ago, the Bar could not have taken sides on racial integration. Lewis said he doesn’t think much of “friend of the court” briefs, because they are usually partisan advocacy rather than independent guidance on the law, and that the public doesn’t make a distinction between a section of the Bar and the whole Bar itself.
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/supreme-court…
Anti-gay group allowed to enter Arkansas adoption case
(Little Rock, Arkansas) A judge has ruled that that a lawsuit challenging an Arkansas law banning unmarried couples from becoming foster or adoptive parents can proceed - and that the conservative group behind the measure can present arguments in the case.
County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza dismissed a motion by Arkansas …
Anti-gay group allowed to enter Arkansas adoption case
(Little Rock, Arkansas) A judge has ruled that that a lawsuit challenging an Arkansas law banning unmarried couples from becoming foster or adoptive parents can proceed - and that the conservative group behind the measure can present arguments in the case.
County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza dismissed a motion by Arkansas …
Anti-gay group allowed to enter Arkansas adoption case
(Little Rock, Arkansas) A judge has ruled that that a lawsuit challenging an Arkansas law banning unmarried couples from becoming foster or adoptive parents can proceed - and that the conservative group behind the measure can present arguments in the case.
County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza dismissed a motion by Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel to dismiss the suit. Piazza then accepted an application by the Arkansas Family Council to enter the case.
The council was behind the successful ballot measure past last November that bans unmarried couples from adopting or fostering. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas filed suit, challenging the constitutionality of the law on behalf of a dozen families, some straight, some gay.
See Anti-gay group allowed to enter Arkansas adoption case
365Gay.com
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/anti-gay-grou…
Adoption Emerges As The Next Gay Rights Battle
The announcement last week that conservatives had mounted a lawsuit against the Florida Bar to keep it from arguing in favor of allowing gays and lesbians to adopt in Florida is the latest evidence that adoption is likely to become the next gay rights battle.
Several events nationwide are pushing the adoption issue to the front burner of gay rights, but Florida remains at the epicenter of the debate.
Late last year, a Miami-Dade circuit judge was the latest to disagree with Florida’s 30-year-old ban on gay adoption, enacted during the infamous Anita Bryant anti-gay crusades of the 70s.
Judge Cindy Lederman’s order allows Frank Gill, 47, and his partner to legally adopt the 4- and 8-year-old half brothers they have raised since 2004.
Lederman’s 53-page ruling found the law to be unconstitutional and to have “no rational basis.”
The Florida Bar of Governors approved filing a “friend of the court” brief on January 30 supporting Lederman’s ruling when the state appealed to the Third District Court.
In an unusual move, lawyers for the conservative Liberty Counsel filed a petition in the Florida Supreme Court, saying the Bar is not free to file a brief in such cases.
Lawyers for Liberty Counsel argue the brief violates the First Amendment.
See
Adoption Emerges As The Next Gay Rights Battle
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/adoption-emer…
Rulings on gay couples’ benefits question Defense of Marriage Act
Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this week that Sears — who married Levenson, a deputy federal public defender, last July — is entitled to the same spousal benefits that heterosexual couples employed by the department receive.
“I’m not convinced this is over,” Levenson said of their long-running battle to be treated like a married couple. “But it pushes the conversation forward.”
Reinhardt’s ruling branded the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. The 9th Circuit’s chief judge, Alex Kozinski, also weighed in on the subject last month, granting benefits to the same-sex spouse of a staff attorney for the court. But he stopped short of basing that decision on constitutional grounds.
The 9th Circuit judges ruled in their capacity as dispute-resolution officials within the federal judiciary, whose employees are prohibited from suing in federal court.
Levenson and Sears see Reinhardt’s order as a step along the road to equality.
But Levenson pointed out Thursday that his attempt to file a new benefits form was rejected by an office computer still programmed to exclude same-sex spouses from even applying.
See Two judges decisions don’t extend beyond the two couples in …
Los Angeles Times – CA,USA
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/02/rulings-on-ga…
Judge Removes Child From Lesbian Parents
(Charleston, West Virginia) The West Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving a lesbian couple’s appeal of a lower court ruling that removed a child they had reared from birth because the judge wanted the child placed with a married opposite-sex couple.
Fayette Circuit Judge Paul Blake …
The Fight Over Gay Adoption Heats Up
Gay rights supporters scored another major victory in court Tuesday, when a state judge in Miami tossed out a statute that had for more than 30 years barred gay people in Florida from adopting children. The decision came after a week packed full of dueling expert testimony over whether any evidence supports the state’s contention that children are put at risk when raised by gay parents. The answer, said Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy S. Lederman, is not at all: “The Department’s position is that homosexuality is immoral. Yet, homosexuals may be lawful foster parents in Florida and care for our most fragile children who have been abused, neglected and abandoned. As such, the exclusion forbidding homosexuals to adopt children does not further the public morality interest it seeks to combat.”
Yet, despite the good news for gays contained in the ruling, the decision is hardly the last word on the issue. The state has vowed to appeal, and the issue is likely to end up before the Florida Supreme Court, which upheld the ban once before in 1995. On the federal level, the U.S. Supreme Court has already let stand lower court rulings that upheld Florida’s law, the nation’s strictest ban on gay adoption. (See a video on the backlash against gay marriage in Florida.)
Meanwhile, conservative activists across the country are working hard to make sure that no court, at any level, has the final word on gay adoption. Like gay marriage before it, conservatives are looking at the issue of who can raise children as one best decided at the ballot box, not in the courthouse. Those efforts received a boost on election day in Arkansas, where voters easily passed a law that restricts any unmarried couple living together from adopting children. Arkansas joined Florida, Nebraska, Utah and Mississippi as the only states with laws that either directly or indirectly ban adoption by gays.
See The Fight Over Gay Adoption Heats Up
TIME
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2008/12/fight-over-ga…
