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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Florida Supreme Court takes up gay adoption advocacy case

(Tallahassee, Florida) The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments as to whether a committee of the Florida Bar Association can present arguments challenging the state’s ban on gays adopting children.

Florida law allows gays to serve as foster parents but not adopt. The law is considered the most repressive of its …

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.

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Adoption Emerges As The Next Gay Rights Battle

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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.

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TIME

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ACLU Seeks Immediate Florida Supreme Court Hearing For Gay Adoptive Dad And His Children

MIAMI – The American Civil Liberties Union and lawyers for Martin Gill’s adopted children filed a request today in Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals seeking to expedite the appeal of last week’s court ruling that the ban on adoption by gay people violates the Florida constitution.

Everyone in this case agrees that prolonging a child’s stay in foster care is not in his best interest. The trial court found that these children are thriving in this home, and that there is no reason – scientific or other – that they should be denied the permanency and protections of adoption,” said Rob Rosenwald, Director of the ACLU of Florida LGBT Advocacy Project. “Today we ask the court to take the best interest of these kids into consideration and not make them wait the extra years it would take for the case to make its way through the traditional appellate process.”

On November 25, 2008, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Cindy Lederman granted adoption of two brothers, ages four and eight, to Martin Gill of North Miami, after a four-day trial that highlighted scientific evidence that proved gay and straight people make equally good parents. The decision overturned a 31-year-old discriminatory law banning gays and lesbians from adopting – the only such law in the U.S. – that was put on the books after the anti-gay campaign led by Anita Bryant in the 1970′s.

Lederman noted in her decision that the fact that parental sexual orientation has no impact on children’s well-being has “been accepted, adopted and ratified by” the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Welfare League of America and the National Association of Social Workers, and that it is “beyond dispute” that the exclusion of gay people from adopting does not protect the interests of children.

The state appealed the decision immediately after it was announced last Tuesday. If today’s request is granted, the case will go straight to the Florida Supreme Court instead of having to go through a lengthy appeals court process. The state has five days to file a response to today’s court filing, which is not available to the public because the document is part of a juvenile court record.

In addition to Rosenwald, Gill is represented by Leslie Cooper and James Esseks of the ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project and Shelbi Day of the ACLU of Florida. The children are represented by Hilarie Bass and Ricardo Gonzalez of Greenberg Traurig, and Charles Auslander, an attorney and former District Administrator for Florida’s Department of Children and Families (DCF).

For more information on the case, visit http://www.aclu.org/gill

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Bigot aLert: Forida Plans To Appeal Gay Adoption Ruling

This isn’t much of a shock, but the Florida Attorney General’s office says it is planning to appeal last months ruling by a Miami judge that overturned Florida’s gay adoption ban. Technically, I believe, they could have just let it be, but that never seemed likely. On one hand, yes, the ruling could be overturned, on the other, a Florida Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay adoption would solidify the overturn of the ban and could provide valuable precedent for Gay right’s in Florida. Plus, like we’ve mentioned, this is shaping up to be a very different case than the last time the Supreme Court upheld the ban in 1995. So the State is going to have to come up with a stronger case. Though, by the time this does go up to the supreme court (if it does), Charlie Crist may have made two more right-leaning appointments to the bench. See State Plans To Appeal Gay Adoption Ruling Miami New Times