U.S. Supreme Court allows ruling denying two dads on birth certificate to stand

by John Jalsevac

• WASHINGTON, DC, October 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a case involving unmarried same-sex partners who unsuccessfully sued to change an adopted boy’s birth certificate to state that the child had two fathers. The Supreme Court’s decision means that the federal court of appeals decision against the couple will stand.

Mickey Smith and Oren Adar, an unmarried same-sex male couple, adopted a Louisiana-born infant in New York in 2006. They sought to have the child’s birth certificate reissued in Louisiana, replacing the names of his biological parents with their own. The registrar refused the request, taking the position that “adoptive parents” means married parents, because in Louisiana only married couples may jointly adopt a child. Adar and Smith sued the registrar, claiming that her decision denies full faith and credit to the New York adoption decree and violates their equal protection guarantees.

However, the ruling by the en banc (16 judges) Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stated the couple could not force Louisiana to change the birth certificate to state that the child had two “dads.”

The ruling affirmed the distinction between “recognizing” the existence of an out-of-state order versus “enforcing” the out-of-state order on a state in which it conflicts with the state’s law. In other words, one state that allows same-sex marriage or same-sex adoption cannot force another state to enforce such an out-of-state law or order against its own law.

“This decision is a big victory against the relentless efforts of activists to export same-sex unions to states that affirm the mother-father paradigm for family,” said Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law.