Miami judge who struck gay adoption ban demoted

(Miami) A Miami-Dade circuit court judge who ruled Florida’s gay adoption ban is unconstitutional has been demoted.

Judge Cindy Lederman has been removed from her 15-year post as top administrative judge over Miami-Dade’s juvenile courts. The new chief justice over Miami courts says he wanted new perspectives and leadership.

Lederman ruled in …

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.

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MiamiHerald.com

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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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