The End Of The Road in Louisiana Birth Certificate Case

As regular readers will know, I’ve been following a case involving litigation over a Louisiana birth certificate for several years now.    Oren Adar and Mickey Smith are a gay male couple who adopted a child who was born in Louisiana.   The adoption was completed in NY which allows a gay male couple to jointly adopt.   After completing the adoption, Adar and Smith asked Louisiana to issue a new birth certificate showing them as parents.

Now if you’re sort of new here this may give you pause, but please, before you comment on this, read a little about birth certificates.   The key points (at least from my point of view) are these: 

Update On Louisiana Birth Certificate Case

While I am doing updates, here’s another tidbit.   There’s a case I’ve been following for a long time–Adar v. Smith.   Oren Adar and Mickey Smith (not the Smith of the case name) are a gay male couple who adopted a child.   The child happened to be born in Louisiana.   The adoption was completed in NY, where two men are permitted to jointly adopt.   Following the adoption, Adar and Smith asked Louisiana to issue a new birth certificate–one that listed both their names.

Now I understand that to many people this may seem odd.   After all, Adar and Smith are not the birth parents of the child.   But the listing of “parents” on a birth certificate is not a statement of historical fact.  It is not a statement that these people are the original parents of the child or even a statement that one of them was present at the birth.  

Quick Update on Louisiana Birth Certificate Case

I’ve now been following Adar vs. Smith for several years.   (I’ve often referred to it as the Louisiana birth certificate case.)  You can get much more detail in all those earlier posts.  But in a nutshell, the controversy is about whether gay male parents, having both legally adopted a child who happens to have been born in Louisiana, are entitled to a new birth certificate listing both of their names.   (I know the birth certificate topic itself, even absent the gay parents, is controversial. You can see posts about that broader topic here.)

Oren Adar and Mickey Smith won their case before the trial court and before a panel of the Fifth Circuit before losing to the en banc appellate court.  (That means all the judges reconsidered the opinion of the original three judge panel. 

About that En Banc Argument in the LA Birth Certificate Case

Last week I posted (yet again) about Adar v. Smith, the Fifth Circuit case where a gay male couple who adopted a child from Louisiana are trying to get a new birth certificate.   (There are a whole series of posts here tracing the history of the case thus far.)   It was the eve of an en banc oral argument in the case and I promised I’d provide more after the argument.  But then I couldn’t find anything except the most cursory accounts of the argument–stories that said nothing more than that the case was argued. 

Then someone sent me a link the transcript of the  argument.   I put it on my list of things to do, but at this point in the semester, there’s no telling when it might come to the top.  

En Banc Argument in Louisiana Birth Certificate Case Tomorrow

For quite some time I’ve been following a case called Adar v. Smith.   You can read back through the posts to get the facts, but here it is in a nutshell. 

Oren Adar and Mickey Smith are a gay male couple who have jointly adopted a child.  The child was born in Louisiana.  

Louisiana routinely issues new birth certificates listing the adoptive parents when an adoption is completed.   (All states do this–a whole other topic that intersects with this one.  You can read up on in a different thread on the blog.)   However, and this is a major however, Louisiana does not allow unmarried adults to jointly adopt.   

Quick Update: Louisiana to Appeal Birth Certificate Case

A few days ago I wrote about a case I’ve been following for a while now–one in which two gay men adopted a child who had been born in Louisiana and then sought a new birth certificate with both their names on it.   (Louisiana would not have permitted such an adoption, but New York did.)   As I noted, the Fifth Circuit released a unanimous opinion, concluding that Louisiana had to issue the birth certificate. 

According to this report, the state plans to appeal.   The initial effort will be to seek rehearing before the entire Fifth Circuit rather than simply a three judge panel.  It seems to me fairly unlikely to succeed, but of course, we’ll have to wait and see.

Gay Adoptive Parents Entitled to Louisiana Birth Certificate

Last fall I wrote about the oral argument before the Fifth Circuit in Adar v. Smith.  I’d actually written about the case before when it was decided by the United States District Court.  Today the Fifth Circuit issued a unanimous ruling that the couple–Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith–are entitled to a birth certificate showing them both as legal parents of the child they had adopted.   (I’ve linked to the actual opinion, but you can read a news account here if you prefer.) 

This is noteworthy because Louisiana does not permit unmarried couples to adopt.  Neither does it permit same-sex couples to marry.  And it doesn’t recognize marriages of same-sex couples completed in other states.  (I’ve written before about the trent towards restricting adoption by unmarried couples, which I think is a veiled way of limiting lesbian/gay adoption, although it impacts heterosexual unmarried couples as well.)  

Appellate Court Hears Argument in Louisiana Birth Certificate Case

A while back I commented on a Louisiana case in which two adoptive gay parents sought a new birth certificate for their son.   I’ll do a brief summary of the case, but I just wanted to note that the case was argued today. (I just updated to add a later version of the story.)  I cannot find much detail about the argument, but it does remind me that it is out there.   It’s worth paying attention to because it might tell us something about the portability of parenthood or perhaps legal significance of birth certificates.    

So here’s the summary:  Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith both adopted the child, I think in New York, which permits gay couples to jointly adopt.    The child was born in Louisiana, which does not permit two unmarried people to adopt.    Since the child was born in Louisiana, the child has a Louisiana birth certificate.   Adar and Smith sought to have a new birth certificate issues–one that reflected their status as parents.  

A Recent Louisiana Case and the Power of Adoption

There’s a case–not such a recent case, but one just came to light thanks to Professor Art Leonard’s watchful eyes–out of Louisiana that confirms an important point about the portability of adoption.    Professor Leonard’s post includes a good summary of the facts.  You can also read the full opinion.   It’s quite long.  

After being together as a couple for 17 years, June Mire and Angela Palazzolo decided to have a child.   When Palazzolo did not become pregnant via assisted insemination, Mire did.   She gave birth to a daughter, IP,  in January 1997.

While the couple had met in Louisiana and the eventual case is a Louisiana case, at the time of the insemination and birth, the couple lived in California.   Consistent with California law, Palazzolo completed a second-parent adoption in 1997.

Lesbian Mothers in Louisiana

Yesterday I wrote about how courts are sometimes more inclined to respond to the individual equity claims of lesbian families than legislatures might be.   But alas, the key word there is “sometimes.”   Courts are not always affirming.   It’s probably not surprising that this seems to be particularly true when the challenge to a lesbian family comes from within that family.  

There is yet another case that I am sorry to say is an of a lesbian refusing to recognize the relationship between her former partner and their child.   (I’m sorry to say that I’ve commented on many similar cases in the past year-and-a-half.  Here’s one, and many of them are collected under the tag “second-parent.)  This case was brought in Lousiana, and given the response of Louisiana in the birth certificate case, the opinion probably shouldn’t be surprising.