An Alabama court order that has been blocking the child-visitation plans of a lesbian woman was temporarily stayed Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case of V.L. and E.L., an estranged lesbian couple who are fighting over three children who were born to E.L. through artificial insemination, has been in the Alabama court system since 2013.
On Monday, the Supreme Court issued an order that stayed an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that said V.L.’s adoption of the three children in Georgia was “void” and unenforceable in Alabama.
V.L.’s request for emergency stay and a full consideration of the case was received by Justice Clarence Thomas and referred to the full court.
Her request for the Supreme Court to hear the full case is still pending.
Kyle Duncan, an attorney for E.L., said his client did not have a comment on Monday’s order, but she would be filing a brief with the Supreme Court later this month that asks the high court not to take the case.
The case should be denied because “it does not present a constitutional issue on which lower courts are in disagreement,” Mr. Duncan said.
Court documents say that E.L. and V.L. had been together since 1995, and eventually decided that E.L. would have children by artificial insemination. One child was born in 2002 and twins were born in 2004.
The women decided to have V.L. obtain a second-parent adoption of the three children, and turned to Georgia, which they believed had more favorable laws than their home state of Alabama. The adoptions were granted in 2007.
However, the women’s relationship fell apart in 2011, and E.L. eventually told V.L. she could no longer have visitation with the three children.
In 2013, V.L. went to an Alabama court, seeking either sole or joint custody of the children, based on her status as adoptive mother.
Lower and appellate courts agreed that V.L. could have visitation.
But in September, the Alabama Supreme Court sided with E.L., saying that since she did not relinquish her own parental rights as required by Georgia law for a non-spousal adoption, the Georgia adoptions were not legally valid and did not need to be recognized in Alabama under the full faith and credit clause.
V.L., represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and other lawyers, turned to the Supreme Court to challenge the Alabama high court’s ruling.
In its Monday order, the Supreme Court did not say whether it would accept the women’s case, but it granted V.L.’s request that the Alabama state court’s ruling be stayed and recalled until the high court made its decision.
If a hearing of the case is granted, the stay will continue, the Supreme Court order added. If a hearing is denied, the stay will immediately end.
V.L. has not seen the children since April, said Kate Kendell, executive director of NCLR.
The case has major implications since in all the years advocates have fought for sexual minority families, “never … has a state supreme court refused to recognize a same-sex parent adoption granted by another state,” Ms. Kendell told supporters.
The NCRL quoted the estranged mother, saying she loves her children “more than anything” and “there isn’t a moment that goes by that I don’t think about them and pray that we’ll be able to be together again soon.”
Mr. Duncan, E.L.’s attorney, noted that the high court “doesn’t just take any issue; it takes issues where the lower courts are split, and we don’t see how this case raises a split of authority.”
In September, another one of E.L.’s attorneys, Randall Nichols of Massey, Stotser and Nichols in Birmingham, Alabama, told Reuters that his client was pleased with the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision, but she regarded the case as a private family matter.
• Cheryl Wetzstein can be reached at cwetzstein@washingtontimes.com.
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