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Federal Court Says Ohio Must Let Transgender People Correct Their Birth Certificates

Posted on: December 17th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson ruled on December 16 that Ohio’s refusal to issue corrected birth certificates for transgender people violates the United States Constitution.  Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union sued state officials on behalf of four transgender plaintiffs whose attempts to get their birth certificates changed to correctly identify their gender had been thwarted.  Ray v. McCloud, Case No. 2:18-cv-272 (S.D. Ohio).

At the time Lambda sued two years ago, there were only three states that categorically prohibited such changes: Kansas, Ohio and Tennessee.  Since then, Kansas has settled a Lambda Legal lawsuit by agreeing to change its policy.  That leaves Tennessee as the last holdout.

However, Judge Watson’s opinion did not address what requirements Ohio may impose to determine whether a particular transgender individual may obtain a new birth certificate correctly reflecting their gender identity.  Some jurisdictions require proof of surgical alteration or at least some clinical treatment, some others are satisfied with a doctor’s attestation as to gender identity, and some will accept a sworn declaration by the individual as to their correct gender identity.  All that the judge held in this case was that the state cannot categorically refuse to make such changes under any circumstances.

This issue has had an inconsistent history in Ohio.   State courts had turned down attempts by transgender individuals to get court orders to change their birth certificates for many years, but then the state did a turnabout and started allowing them until 2016, when it reverted to its former prohibition.  Judge Watson noted that at least ten transgender people had actually obtained new birth certificates before the policy was changed.  Since the statute governing birth certificates in Ohio does not even mention the issue but generally provides that a birth certificate can be corrected if information “has not been properly or accurately recorded,” the state claimed that it was now acting according to its interpretation of the statute as requiring a record that was correct at the time of birth.

Lambda’s complaint on behalf of Stacie Ray, Basil Argento, Ashley Breda and “Jane Doe” asserted that the state’s policy violated their Due Process privacy rights and their Equal Protection rights under the 14th Amendment, as well as their Free Speech rights under the 1st Amendment.  Having ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on their 14th Amendment claims, Judge Watson commented in a footnote that he would decline to analyze their 1st Amendment claim.

At an earlier stage in the litigation, the court had refused to dismiss the case outright.  The December 16 ruling granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs based on the evidentiary record.  Each of the plaintiffs had explained how having a birth certificate that did not correctly reflect their gender identity caused practical problems for them, essentially misgendering them and “outing” them as transgender when they were required to provide their birth certificate.  The court also noted the significant risk of harassment and physical violence that transgender people face as an important reason to allow them to obtain birth certificates that identify them correctly, citing a 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey showing that almost one-third of transgender individuals who had to use an identity document that misgendered them consequently suffered harassment, denial of benefits or services, discrimination, or physical assault.

The court found that because the fundamental right of privacy was involved, the standard of review for their Due Process claim is “strict scrutiny,” under which the state’s policy would be presumed to be unconstitutional unless it met the burden of showing a compelling justification.  On the equal protection claim, Judge Watson found that many federal courts now agree that heightened scrutiny applies, under which the state must show an exceedingly persuasive reason for its policy.  Courts use heightened scrutiny for sex discrimination claims, arguably making relevant the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision earlier this year, which held that discrimination because of transgender status is sex discrimination within the meaning of the federal anti-discrimination law, Title VII.

Either way, however, the court concluded that the policy must fall, because the state’s arguments didn’t even support a “rational basis” for what it was doing.  Having allowed transgender people to get new birth certificates in the past, the state should have articulated a reason why it had changed that policy, but it could not credibly do so.  What the court left unstated was the likelihood that the change in policy was entirely political.

The state’s attempt to argue that its interest in having accurate birth records required this categorical policy was fatally undermined by the fact that changes to birth certificates are made in many other circumstances.  A person who gets a legal name change can get a new birth certificate showing their new legal name.  After an adoption, a new birth certificate can be issued listing the adoptive parents instead of the birth parents.  The court found that no persuasive justification had been offered for freely changing the information on birth certificates in these other circumstances but not for transgender people, especially in light of the difficulty and harm they suffered.

As noted, however, the court’s ruling was limited to the categorical ban, leaving yet to be determined the criteria Ohio was adopt for determining whether the change can be made in a particular case.  Furthermore, the state could attempt to appeal this ruling to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, but that court has already gone on record regarding gender identity discrimination as a form of sex discrimination in the case of the late Michigan transgender funeral director Aimee Stephens, who employment discrimination case was part of the Bostock decision by the Supreme Court.

Lambda Legal attorneys who worked on this case include Kara Ingelhart and Peter Renn.  Malita Picasso and John Knight of the ACLU’s LGBT Rights Project and Freda Levenson, Susan Becker, Elizabeth Bonham and David Carey of the ACLU of Ohio were co-counsel, as well as pro bono counsel Jennifer Roach from Thompson Hine LLP.

 

Supreme Court Lets Stand 7th Circuit Decision on Lesbian Spouses and Birth Certificates

Posted on: December 14th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Henderson v. Box, 947 F.3d 482 (2020), that the state of Indiana must extend to married lesbian couples the same parentage presumption it applies to married different sex couples: that a birth mother’s spouse is presumed to be a parent of her child, that  the child be deemed born “in wedlock,” and that both mothers be named as parents on the birth certificat.  On December 14, the Supreme Court denied the State of Indiana’s petition to review that ruling without explanation or any dissent.  Box v. Henderson, 2020 WL 7327836 (Dec. 14, 2020).

On one hand, this action might be seen as routinely expected, because the Supreme Court decided a similar case from Arkansas exactly this way in 2017.  In Pavan v. Smith, 137 S. Ct. 2075, the Court voted 6-3 to reverse a decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court.  That opinion was issued per curiam, although a close reading would identify the hand of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Jr., author of the Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, in which the Court not only said that same-sex couples have a constitutional right under the 14th Amendment to marry, but also that such marriages must be treated by the states as equal in every respect to the marriages of different sex couples.  In Obergefell, Justice Kennedy specifically mentioned listing on birth certificates as one of the incidents of legal marriage from which same-sex couples had previously been excluded.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissenting opinion in Pavan, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, arguing that the Obergefell ruling did not necessarily compel the conclusion stated by the Court and that the Court should have scheduled briefing and a full hearing on the question rather than issue a summary per curiam ruling.

Since Pavan was decided, Justice Kennedy has retired and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died, being replaced respectively by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both religious conservatives.  When Indiana filed its petition for review in the Henderson case last spring, Justice Ginsburg was still on the Court and the Pavan v. Smith majority was intact.  The same-sex couples who had filed the lawsuit, represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, did not even file an opposition, assuming the Court would dismiss the petition.  But with Justice Ginsburg’s death and replacement, the calculus had changed, as the Pavan 6-member majority had been reduced to a 4-member minority of the Court.  The Supreme Court then requested the plaintiffs to file a reply to Indiana’s petition for review, and the possibility appeared that the Supreme Court might take up the issue anew.

At the heart of Indiana’s case was the contention that the presumption that a husband is the father is reality-based in biology, and there is no such basis for a reality-based presumption for the wife of a woman who gives birth, although the 7th Circuit had observed that one of the lesbian couples in the case comprised two biological mothers, as the second mother had donated the egg that was gestated by the birth mother.

Be that as it may, Indiana, in common with other states, has never treated the father’s parental status as conclusive, since it could be rebutted by evidence that a different man was the biological father, and ultimately a birth certificate records legal parentage, not biological parentage, as in the new birth certificates that are issued upon a child’s adoption.  The trial court, and ultimately the 7th Circuit, related that Indiana relied on self-reporting by the mother in determining a man’s name to record on a birth certificate, and the form the birth mother is given asks for the name of the father, not explicitly the name of the biological father, making it likely that many men are named as fathers on birth certificates despite the lack of a biological tie to the child.

Ultimately, wrote the 7th Circuit, “The district court’s order requiring Indiana to recognize the children of these plaintiffs as legitimate children, born in wedlock, and to identify both wives in each union as parents, is affirmed.”

By refusing to review this ruling, without any explanation or dissent by the conservative justices, the Supreme Court seems to have put the seal on this issue.  This is particularly reassuring in light of gratuituous comments by Justice Alito (joined by Justice Thomas) in a statement he issued when the Court refused to review former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis’s petition to review an award of damages against her for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Obergefell decision was announced.  Davis v. Ermold, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 3709, 2020 WL 588157 (October 5). In Alito’s statement, and remarks he later delivered to a conservative public forum, Alito sharply criticized the Obergefell decision and suggested that the Court needed to “fix” the problems that ruling created for those with religious objections to same-sex marriage.  This focused renewed attention on the Henderson case and the possibility that the Court would take it and rule in a way that would detract from the equal legal status of same-sex marriages.  The decision not to take this case may represent an important bullet dodged for now.

Federal Court Blocks Idaho Law Barring Transgender Women from Athletic Competition

Posted on: August 18th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

David C. Nye, the Chief U.S. District Judge for Idaho, issued an injunction on August 17 to block enforcement of Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which Governor Bradley Little had signed into law on March 30.  Hecox v. Little, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 149442.  Passage of this law made Idaho the first state to enact a statutory ban on transgender women and girls competing in women’s interscholastic sports at all levels.

 

The statute was not enacted in response to any particular incident or crisis involving transgender women in Idaho seeking to compete in women’s sports.  Rather, it appears to have been inspired by news reports about incidents in other states, and in particular a lawsuit filed by some cisgender girls in Connecticut who were upset that the interscholastic sports association in that state had adopted a policy of allowing transgender women to compete as women.

 

Judge Nye pointed out that various professional associations governing women’s interscholastic sports have adopted rules that transgender women would be eligible to compete in women’s sports after having undergone at least one year of hormone therapy to suppress their testosterone levels, based on evidence showing that this would not pose unfair competition to cisgender women.

 

Despite the lack of any sort of emergency, the Idaho legislature actually delayed by a few days joining the nationwide trend of moving legislative activity on-line in the face of the coronavirus pandemic in order to enact two anti-transgender bills: this one, which the Republican State Attorney General warned them would present legal issues under the Constitution and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and a bill reviving a ban on issuing new birth certificates for transgender individuals, passed in defiance of an injunction issued by the federal court against a similar previous statute.  It was clearly anti-trans month in the Idaho legislature.

 

In addition to excluding transgender women from competing in any organized or team sports activity that was designated for women only, the law empowered anybody to challenge the female sex of a participant, placing the burden on the challenged individual to provide evidence of their female sex according to a definition that in essence considers transgender women to be men.  The law also authorized anybody who claimed to have been harmed by a violation of the statute to sue for damages.

 

The ACLU filed suit on behalf of Lindsay Hecox, transgender girl interested in competing in women’s sports, and a cisgender girl allowed to proceed anonymously as Jane Doe, both challenging the law on constitutional and statutory grounds, and seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the law from going into effect while the lawsuit plays out.  Jane Doe argued that the law subjected her to the possibility of being challenged as to her sex and subjected to invasive procedures.  The state responded with a motion to dismiss the case, and two cisgender women filed a motion to intervene as co-defendants, claiming that they would be harmed by being subjected to unfair competition from transgender women if the law was blocked.  Of course, the Trump Administrative, which is not a party to litigation involving a state law, filed a statement of interest, supporting Idaho’s right to exclude transgender women from competition.

 

Much of Judge Nye’s decision was taken up with the questions of whether the lawsuit was filed prematurely, whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue, and whether to grant the motion by the cisgender women to intervene.  He dealt with those issues at length, ultimately concluding that the plaintiffs did have a personal stake in the outcome of the case and that the law, as written, was subject to a pre-enforcement legal challenge.  The question of intervention was a closer call, but the judge resolved it in favor of allowing intervention.

 

However, he concluded that it was inappropriate to dismiss the case because this was a clear case of discrimination due to transgender status, and the Supreme Court’s June 15 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County clearly shows that such discrimination is discrimination “because of sex,” and thus subject to “heightened scrutiny” from the court in an Equal Protection challenge.   When a law is subject to heightened scrutiny, it does not enjoy the normal presumption of constitutionality. Rather, the state has a burden of justification, to show that the law substantially advances an important state interest.  Furthermore, as the Supreme Court held years ago in an opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg finding the Virginia Military Institute’s men-only admissions policy to be unconstitutional, a law that discriminates because of sex will only survive judicial review if the state has an “exceedingly persuasive” justification for it.

 

In this case, however, such a justification was lacking, as Judge Nye found when he turned to the issue of a preliminary injunction.  Prior to the passage of the law there had been no official state policy restricting transgender women from competing as women, so this injunction was about maintaining the status quo while the lawsuit was under way.  Judge Nye weighed the factors courts are supposed to consider when determining whether to interfere with the legislature’s lawmaking power by blocking enforcement of a new statute, and resolved the issue against the state.

 

The state’s purported justification for the law was to “ensure equality and opportunities” for female athletes, but the court was not persuaded that law would substantially advance that goal.  “Ultimately,” Nye wrote, “the Court must hear testimony from the experts at trial and weigh both their credibility and the extent of the scientific evidence. However, the incredibly small percentage of transgender women athletes in general, coupled with the significant dispute regarding whether such athletes actually have physiological advantages over cisgender women when they have undergone hormone suppression in particular, suggest the Act’s categorical exclusion of transgender women athletes has no relationship to ensuring equality and opportunities for female athletes in Idaho.”

 

Taking note of existing rules in scholastic competition that transgender girls could not compete as women until they had undergone a year of testosterone suppression therapy, he could find little rationale for the law.  “In short, the State has not identified a legitimate interest served by the Act that the preexisting rules in Idaho did not already address, other than an invalid interest of excluding transgender women and girls from women’s sports entirely, regardless of their physiological characteristics,” he concluded. “As such, Lindsay is likely to succeed on the merits of her equal protection claim. Again, at this stage, the Court only discusses the ‘likelihood’ of success based on the information currently in the record. Actual success—or failure—on the merits will be determined at a later stage.”

 

However, he continued, “Instead of ensuring ‘long-term benefits that flow from success in athletic endeavors for women and girls,’ it appears that the Act hinders those benefits by subjecting women and girls to unequal treatment, excluding some from participating in sports at all, incentivizing harassment and exclusionary behavior, and authorizing invasive bodily examinations.  In the absence of any evidence that transgender women threatened equality in sports, girls’ athletic opportunities, or girls’ access to scholarships in Idaho during the ten years such policies were in place, neither Defendants nor the Intervenors would be harmed by returning to this status quo.”

 

Thus, the Idaho legislature is 0 for 2 on its decision to prolong the legislative session in the face of the pandemic, as a different federal judge has already reiterated that the injunction against the prior birth certificate law remains in effect as the lawsuit against the new birth certificate law – which was disingenuously worded to distinguish itself from the earlier one – continues.

 

The plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU.  Judge Nye, who had served as a state court judge for several years, was nominated to the district court by President Obama during his last year in office, 2016, when Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority were refusing to confirm any of Obama’s nominees.  But Nye, a graduate of Brigham Young University’s Law School with a good reputation who earned the ABA’s highest rating, was nominated on the recommendation of Idaho’s two conservative Republican senators, who then asked President Trump to re-nominate him in 2017, and he quickly became Chief Judge when an elderly colleague retired shortly thereafter.  So here is the irony: Just as Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee wrote the opinion protecting transgender people under Title VII, one of his first district court nominees has rejected the position of the Trump Administration’s statement of interest filed in this case.

Supreme Court Rules that Same-Sex Spouses are Entitled to Be Listed on Birth Certificates

Posted on: June 26th, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

When a child is born to a woman married to another woman, both women should be listed as parents on the child’s birth certificate. So ruled the Supreme Court, voting 6-3 and reversing a decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court on the last day of its October 2016 Term, which was coincidentally the second anniversary of the Court’s historic marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), which provides the basis for this new ruling in Pavan v. Smith, No. 16-992 (June 26, 2017), reversing 505 S.W.3d 169 (2016).

The petitioners in this case were two married same-sex couples, Leigh and Jana Jacobs and Terrah and Marisa Pavan. Both couples resided in Arkansas when their children were born in 2015, having previously married out of state.  Both couples filed paperwork with the state seeking birth certificates listing both mothers as parents.  The state turned them down, issuing birth certificates listing just the birth mothers and leaving the space for fathers blank.

The state’s Health Department argued that this was compelled by a state statute that provides that when a married woman gives birth, her husband will be listed on the birth certificate. (This is frequently referred to as the parental presumption.) This is so even if the woman conceives through donor insemination and her husband is not the biological father of the child, or even if some other man got the wife pregnant.  Incredibly, the Health Department sought to justify its refusal to name both parents on birth certificates by saying that the purpose of the birth certificate is to record biological lineage, which is pretty strange if husbands get listed regardless of their biological relation to the child.  Furthermore, Arkansas, like other states, issues amended birth certificates if children are adopted, listing their new legal parents, again regardless of the fact that one or both of the adoptive parents are not biologically related to the child.

The women sued the Commissioner of the health department and the trial court agreed with them that this result was unconstitutional under Obergefell, because the statute “categorically prohibits every same-sex married couple from enjoying the same spousal benefits which are available to every opposite-sex married couple.” In Obergefell, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have the same right to marry as opposite-sex couples, which means they are entitled to be treated the same by the state for all reasons of law.

The Arkansas Supreme Court was divided in this case. A majority sided with the Health Department, buying the incredible argument that birth certificates are supposed to be a record of biological lineage.  Wrote the Arkansas court, “The statute centers on the relationship of the biological mother and the biological father to the child, not on the marital relationship of husband and wife,” and so it was consistent with Obergefell.  Not so, argued the dissenters, writing that under Obergefell “a same-sex married couple is entitled to a birth certificate on the same basis as an opposite-sex married couple.”

The majority U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the dissenters, finding this case so clear that it simultaneously granted the petition for review and issued a decision, without waiting for briefing on the merits or oral argument. The decision was issued “Per Curiam” (Latin for “by the Court”) without identifying an individual justice as its author.

The Court concluded that the Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision “denied married same-sex couples access to the ‘constellation of benefits that the State has linked to marriage,’” in violation of the Obergefell ruling. Under Arkansas’s statute, “same-sex parents in Arkansas lack the same right as opposite-sex parents to be listed on a child’s birth certificate, a document often used for important transactions like making medical decisions for a child or enrolling a child in school.  Obergefell proscribes such disparate treatment.”

The Court pointed out that in the Obergefell decision it had included “birth and death certificates” in its list of “rights, benefits, and responsibilities” of marriage to which same-sex couples are entitled on the same basis as different-sex couples.   “That was no accident,” said the Court, as “several of the plaintiffs in Obergefell challenged a State’s refusal to recognize their same-sex spouses on their children’s birth certificates.  In considering those challenges, we held the relevant state laws unconstitutional to the extent they treated same-sex couples differently from opposite-sex couples.”  The Court said this applied with “equal force” to the Arkansas statute.

Rejecting Arkansas’s argument that birth certificates were all about biological relationships, the Court insisted, to the contrary, that “Arkansas law makes birth certificates about more than just genetics,” citing as a prime example the provision involving donor insemination. “Arkansas has thus chosen to make its birth certificates more than a mere marker of biological relationships: The State uses those certificates to give married parents a form of legal recognition that is not available to unmarried parents.  Having made that choice,” the Court continued, “Arkansas may not, consistent with Obergefell, deny married same-sex couples that recognition.”  The case was sent back to the Arkansas courts for “further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.”

The Per Curiam Court included all of the justices who had voted in the majority in Obergefell plus Chief Justice John Roberts, who was the principal dissenter in the marriage case. Roberts’ vote in this case is notable, given the vehemence of his dissent in Obergefell, but apparently, accepting that Obergefell is now a precedent and that there are not five votes on the Court to overturn it, Roberts was willing to agree that the Arkansas Supreme Court’s ruling was inconsistent with it.

Not so the three dissenters, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and the recently installed Neil Gorsuch, who wrote a dissent on their behalf. When Gorsuch was nominated, it was predicted that he would be as bad for LGBT rights as his predecessor, Justice Antonin Scalia, if not worse. His dissent here vindicated that view.

First, he scolded the Court for deciding the case summarily, arguing that the law in question is not “settled and stable.” He did not deem it clear that Obergefell would invalidate state laws restricting who could be listed on a birth certificate, when justified by a policy of recording biological ties.

He took a narrow view of Obergefell, as some lower courts have done in birth certificate litigation around the country, arguing that “nothing in Obergefell spoke (let alone clearly) to the question whether [the Arkansas statute], or a state supreme court decision upholding it, must go. The statute in question establishes a set of rules designed to ensure that the biological parents of a child are listed on the child’s birth certificate.”  This is, of course, incorrect, as the Per Curiam opinion demonstrated.  The state’s rules, requiring that the husband of a woman who conceives through donor insemination be listed as the child’s father, clearly do not “ensure” that the biological parents of a child are listed on the certificate.  Indeed, as the Court noted in passing in its Per Curiam opinion, the “rules” in Arkansas even provide that if the birth mother, her husband, and the actual biological father of the child all agree in sworn statements, the actual father can be listed instead of the husband, but otherwise the husband would be listed.  Clearly, listing people on birth certificates in Arkansas under current statutes is not all about biological relationships.

Gorsuch also noted that since this litigation has been under way Arkansas officials have come around to agree that the birth mother’s spouse should be listed on the birth certificate. Since the state has now agreed (without amending its statute) that it should list same-sex spouses on birth certificates, Gorsuch professes to see no reason for this ruling.  “Indeed,” he wrote, “it is not even clear what the Court expects to happen on remand that hasn’t happened already.  The Court does not offer any remedial suggestion, and none leaps to mind.  Perhaps the state supreme court could memorialize the state’s concession.”  Indeed, exactly so, the proper action on remand is a judicial declaration that same-sex spouses are entitled to be listed on birth certificates, and a permanent injunction requiring that result. This is not superfluous, since the state legislature has not amended the statute.

The Court’s decision will affect pending litigation elsewhere. In Arizona, the state’s intermediate court of appeals ruled on June 22 in Turner v. Steiner, 2017 WL 2687680, that a lesbian co-parent was not entitled to be listed on a birth certificate, conflicting with a ruling by another panel of the court of appeals, McLaughlin v. Jones, 382 P.3d 118 (2016), which was recently granted review by the Arizona Supreme Court.  The Turner decision cited the Arkansas Supreme Court’s ruling in this case, as well as a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling from 2015, In re P.L.L.-R., 876 N.W.2d 147.   Plaintiffs in the Wisconsin case should be able to file a new suit based on Pavan, if necessary, but perhaps Pavan v. Smith will encourage state officials to drop their obstructions and accord equal treatment to same-sex married couples.

The plaintiffs in this case were represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, with local counsel Cheryl Maples of Heber Springs, Arkansas. Attorneys from the Washington and Boston offices of Ropes & Gray, LLP, worked on the case in collaboration with NCLR, and R&G’s Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, who shared the oral argument in the marriage equality cases two years ago, was Counsel of Record who might have argued the case had the Court scheduled a hearing.

Arkansas Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Discriminatory Birth Certificate Statutes

Posted on: December 12th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

Although the U.S. Supreme Court issued a sweeping ruling for marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015, pockets of resistance remain in the states. The latest manifestation of this phenomenon comes from Arkansas, where the state’s Supreme Court ruled on December 8 by a 4-3 vote that same-sex couples do not enjoy the same constitutional rights as opposite sex couples when it comes to listing parents on birth certificates.  In Smith v. Pavan, 2016 Ark. 437, the majority of the court rejected a constitutional challenge to two Arkansas statutes under which wives of birth mothers are denied equal treatment with husbands of birth mothers in the matter of being listed as parents on birth certificates.  Three members of the court disagreed with the majority to varying extents in separate opinions.

 

The case was brought by three lesbian couples. Two of the couples, Marisa and Terrah Pavan and Leigh and Jana Jacobs, were married out-of-state and then had a child born in their residential state of Arkansas.  The third couple, Courtney Kassel and Kelly Scott, had a child in Arkansas and married shortly thereafter.  In all three cases, the Department of Health, headed by named-defendant Dr. Nathaniel Smith, refused to list the spouse of the birth mother on the birth certificate, relying on gender-specific Arkansas statutes that provide for listing husbands but not wives of birth mothers.

 

The women, represented by attorney Cheryl Maples with amicus assistance from the ACLU of Arkansas and the national ACLU LGBT Rights Project, filed suit against Smith. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Davis Fox accepted their argument that Dr. Smith, who was also a named defendant in Wright v. Smith, the Arkansas state court marriage equality case, was bound by the decision in that earlier case, which had struck down as unconstitutional not only the state’s ban on same-sex marriage but also “all other state and local laws and regulations identified in Plaintiff’s complaint or otherwise in existence to the extent they do not recognize same-sex marriages validly contracted outside Arkansas, prohibit otherwise qualified same-sex couples from marrying in Arkansas or deny same-sex married couples the rights, recognition and benefits associated with marriage in the State of Arkansas.”

 

The case appeared clear to Judge Fox. The final court order issued in Wright v. Smith required that Arkansas treat same-sex marriages as equal to different-sex marriages in all respects under state law, and Smith was precluded from trying to re-litigate that issue in this case.  Smith’s appeal from the trial court’s ruling in Wright v. Smith was pending when the U.S. Supreme Court announced its ruling in Obergefell, after which the Arkansas Supreme Court dismissed that appeal as moot, ending a stay that it had granted on the trial court’s Order.

 

Furthermore, Judge Fox found support for his decision in favor of the women in the Obergefell opinion itself, noting that Justice Anthony Kennedy had mentioned “certificates of birth and death” as one of the benefits of same-sex marriage. Kennedy had written:

 

“The challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and they abridge central precepts of equality. The marriage laws at issue are in essence unequal: Same-sex couples are denied benefits afforded opposite-sex couples and are barred from exercising a fundamental right. . . . The State laws challenged by the petitioners in these cases are held invalid to the extent they exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.”

 

To Judge Fox, this meant that married same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights of marriage as different sex couples, including the same spousal rights regarding birth certificates.

 

But a majority of the Arkansas Supreme Court insisted that the Obergefell decision, and the state court Wright decision, had not decided this issue. An opinion by Justice Josephine Linker Hart for four members of the seven-member court insisted that the only questions decided by these prior cases were whether same-sex couples could marry or have their out-of-state marriages recognized.   Viewed this way, the Wright v. Smith decision would not preclude Smith from applying Arkansas statutes to refuse to list the same-sex spouses on birth certificates unless the court were to decide independently that doing so violated the constitutional rights of the spouses.  This the court was unwilling to do.

 

Since Judge Fox had ordered Smith to issue new birth certificates listing both mothers, and that order had not been stayed, the Supreme Court decided that the case should be treated as a facial challenge to the constitutionality of the statutes. Because the plaintiffs had actually received the birth certificates they sought, any “as applied” challenge was deemed to be moot.

 

One of the challenged statutes provides that when a child is born to a married woman, her husband will be listed on the birth certificate as the child’s father unless a court has determined either that another man is the child’s biological father, or the mother, the biological father, and her husband have executed affidavits establishing that the husband is not the biological father. The other challenged statute provides that when a child is born to an unmarried woman, only she will be listed on the original birth certificate, but a new birth certificate can be issued listing the biological father if the child is “legitimated” by the biological parents subsequently marrying, or a court determines who is the biological fathers.

 

The court insisted that both statutes are clearly intended to record historical facts about the biological parents of a child, and that the state has a legitimate reason to want the original birth certificate to correctly list these historical facts. “In our analysis of the statutes presented above,” wrote Justice Hart, “it is the nexus of the biological mother and the biological father of the child that is to be truthfully recorded on the child’s birth certificate.

 

Quoting from an affidavit submitted by Melinda Allen, the state’s Vital Records Registrar, the court adopted her contention that the recordation of biological parents was “critical” to the department’s “identification of public health trends,” and she asserted that “it can be critical to an individual’s identification of personal health issues and genetic conditions.” She noted that in adoption and surrogacy situations, the biological parents are listed on original birth certificates, which are then “sealed” when new certificates are issued showing adoptive or intended parents, since the state deems it essential that a permanent record of biological parentage be preserved.

 

Justice Hart said that Judge Fox had “conflated distinct categories of marriage, parental rights, and vital records,” and that the issue in this case was not who can be a parent but rather who must be listed on a birth certificate. “On the record presented,” she wrote, “we cannot say that naming the nonbiological spouse on the birth certificate of the child is an interest of the person so fundamental that the State must accord the interest its respect under either statute.”

 

As to an equal protection challenge, the court found that the same-sex spouse is not similarly situated to the husband, and “it does not violate equal protection to acknowledge basic biological truths”. In this case, the majority found, “the challenged classification serves important governmental objectives” – the factual record of biological parentage for the reasons asserted by Melinda Allen in her affidavit.

 

The court pointed out that there was another statute that might be invoked in this situation, governing intended fathers in cases involving “artificial insemination.” In such cases, if the mother’s husband consented in writing to her insemination with donated sperm, the child would be “deemed the legitimate natural child of the woman and the woman’s husband” and he would be listed on the birth certificate.

 

At oral argument in this case, counsel for Dr. Smith conceded that this statute violated equal protection, since in this case both the husband and the same-sex spouse of the birth mother were not biologically related to the child, and thus similarly situated.   Smith’s attorney argued that if a case was brought under that statute, the court “could resolve many of the concerns raised by the [women] by amending the wording of the statute,” but Justice Hart rejected this suggestion, insisting that “this court is not a legislative body and it cannot change the wording of the statute.”  Furthermore, since the plaintiffs did not invoke the artificial insemination statute in this case – possibly because they did not have written authorization for the insemination procedure as required by the statute – the trial court did not rule on the statute’s constitutionality, so the issue of its constitutionality was not properly before the court.

 

In a concluding paragraph, the court “admonished” Judge Fox for having made a public statement that if the Arkansas Supreme Court granted a stay of his order in this case, it would be depriving people of their constitutional rights, and that the court had deprived people of their constitutional rights in a separate matter. “A remark made to gain the attention of the press and to create public clamor undermines ‘public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality,’ not only of this court, but also of the entire judiciary,” wrote Hart, and Fox was formally “admonished” for “his inappropriate comments made while performing the duties of his judicial office.”

 

Chief Justice Howard Brill, in a separate opinion, agreed with the majority that Obergefell was a narrow holding that same-sex couples have a right to marry, and thus did not directly settle the question of birth certificates. However, he wrote, “The question here is the broader impact of that ruling as it affects birth certificates,” and, he wrote, “The logical extension of Obergefell, mandated by the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause, is that a same-sex married couple is entitled to a birth certificate on the same basis as an opposite-sex married couple,” because “the right to a birth certificate is a corollary to the right to a marriage license.”  He prefaced his opinion with a quote from the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s song “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and concluded by arguing that it was up to the legislature to amend the existing laws to come into compliance with Obergefell.  “The times they are a-changin’,” he wrote.  “All three branches of the government must change accordingly.  It is time to heed the call.”

 

In her separate opinion, Justice Rhonda K. Wood joined the court in reversing the case on the ground of “prudential-mootness” because the plaintiff couples had received their revised birth certificates on the order of Judge Fox. At the same time, she wrote, “I encourage the legislature to address the relevant birth certificate statutes in the upcoming session to avoid a plethora of litigation and confusion for the courts.”  She pointed out that this litigation had actually stimulated the Health Department to modify its procedures, noting that Allen’s affidavit stated that the department “will issue birth certificates listing both same-sex parents if the hospital submits documentation reflecting that fact,” although the parties disputed at oral argument about how consistently this new policy was being implemented.  She also noted Smith’s concession at the oral argument that the artificial insemination statute, as written, violated equal protection, and that if the department administers it appropriately, “any legal challenge in this regard would be moot.”  Judge Wood emphasized the fluidity of the situation on the ground and the likelihood that things had changed since Allen made her affidavit.  This, to her, would justify the court as treating the appeal as moot and sending the case back to the circuit court for a new hearing to determine the current facts, which might make it unnecessary to issue a constitutional ruling.  However, departing from the majority, she wrote that in her view, “states cannot constitutionally deny same-sex couples the benefits to marital status, which include equal access to birth certificates,” and suggested that the legislature should amend the statute to comply with this conclusion.

 

Justice Paul Danielson dissented totally from the majority opinion, stating that he would affirm Judge Fox’s ruling, agreeing that Smith and Obergefell settled the matter and the statutes as written were clearly unconstitutional.

 

Justices Wood and Danielson dissented from the majority’s admonishment of Judge Fox. Justice Wood merely stated that she had not “participated” in the majority’s decision to admonish the judge. Justice Danielson wrote at length, arguing that the admonishment violated Judge Fox’s constitutional free speech rights, quoting a U.S. Supreme Court decision stating that “the operations of the courts and the judicial conduct of judges [are] matters of the utmost public concern.” The Supreme Court “has cautioned against repressing speech under the guise of promoting public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary,” wrote Danielson.  “In short,” he concluded, “the fact that members of this court have personally taken offense to the circuit judge’s remarks is not a sufficient basis for suggesting that those remarks violate our disciplinary rules.”

Federal Judge Orders Indiana to List Two Moms on Birth Certificates

Posted on: July 1st, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled on June 30 that Indiana was failing to comply with the Supreme Court’s mandate for marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges, decided last June 26, when the state refused to list the same-sex spouses of birth mothers on their children’s birth certificates.  Ruling on cases brought by several same-sex couples who were married before their children were born, Judge Pratt found that the mandate to afford equal marriage rights to same-sex couples included a requirement that the “parental presumption” applied to husbands of women who give birth should also be applied to their wives.  Henderson v. Adams, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 84916 (S.D. Ind.).

Judge Pratt explained that the usual procedure in Indiana for issuing birth certificates starts when hospital staff “work with the birth mother to complete the State of Indiana’s ‘Certificate of Live Birth Worksheet,’” which was created by the state as part of its Birth Registration System.  “Staff at the hospital upload the information provided on the Indiana Birth Worksheet to a State database.  The county health department then receives notification that birth information has been added to the database.  A notification letter to the birth mother is generated on a form provided by the State, which indicates that information has been received by the county health department and requests that the mother notify the county health department if there is an error with respect to the child’s identifying information.”  If the mother wants a birth certificate, she has to request one, which will then be generated out of the database.

One of the questions on the Worksheet is whether the birth mother is married.  If she answers “no,” she is asked whether a paternity affidavit has been completed for the child, in which case the person identified as the father will go into the database and be listed on the birth certificate.  If there has been no affidavit, then the space is left blank, even if the mother knows the identity of the child’s biological father, and the birth certificate will list only the mother.  If the answer is “yes,” the husband’s name will go into the database, and ultimately will be listed on the birth certificate.  Even if the child of a married couple is conceived with donated sperm, there is a presumption that the husband is the father, unless the mother takes steps during this initial information-gathering process to make clear that her husband is not the biological father.

Even though all of the plaintiff couples in this case are married, the state refused to accept same-sex spouses into the database or to list them on the birth certificate.  The state’s position was that the database and the birth certificates generated from it are supposed to create a true record of the biological parentage of the child, and that because a same-sex spouse of a birth mother is not biologically related to the child, listing her in the database and on the birth certificate would create a false record.  The state took the position that a same-sex spouse could only be listed in the database and the birth certificate if she adopted the child with the permission of the birth mother, a process involving expenses and delay, during which time the child would have only one legal parent.

Judge Pratt accepted the plaintiffs’ argument that “Indiana’s refusal to grant the status of parenthood to female spouses of artificially-inseminated birth mothers while granting the status of parenthood to male spouses of artificially-inseminated birth mother violates the Equal Protection Clause,” because it was sex discrimination, pure and simple.

Furthermore, sex discrimination requires heightened scrutiny, putting the burden on the state to justify its policy and show that it advances an important state interest.  Because the state presumes, without proof, that the husbands of birth mothers are the parents of their children, the policy does not, in fact, advance the state’s asserted interest of creating a “true” record of the child’s biological parents.  The state argued that it was the duty of the married birth mother to advise hospital staff while completing the Worksheet if her child was conceived through donor sperm so that her husband’s name would be excluded from the database, but this was clearly a spurious argument, since the Worksheet does not prompt hospital staff members to ask this question.

“The State Defendant’s argument that the birth mother should acknowledge that she is not married to the father of her child when she has been artificially inseminated or else she is committing fraud when she has been artificially inseminated is not consistent with the Indiana Birth Worksheet, Indiana law, or common sense,” wrote Judge Pratt.  “The Indiana Birth Worksheet asks, ‘are you married to the father of your child,’ yet it does not define ‘father.’  This term can mean different things to different women.  Common sense says that an artificially-inseminated woman married to a man who has joined in the decision for this method of conception, and who intends to treat the child as his own, would indicate that she is married to the father of her child.  Why would she indicate otherwise?”

Judge Pratt pointed out that the Worksheet, devised by the state, made no attempt to elicit the information that the State deemed to be so important, and, furthermore, “there is no warning of fraud or criminal liability.”  She pointed out that some other states had enacted specific statutory language to deal with the use of donor insemination by married couples and the issuance of appropriate birth certificates, but Indiana has failed to do so.  She pointed out, however, that in one such state, Wisconsin, litigation is pending because that state has also been refusing to list same-sex spouses on birth certificates.

Ultimately, she pointed out, the Worksheet process as set up by the state did not achieve its articulated purpose of creating a “true” record of biological parents, and was administered in a way that clearly discriminated against same-sex couples.  Rejecting the state’s argument that employing a parental presumption was not required under Obergefell’s mandate of equal marriage benefits, she pointed out, “the state created a benefit for married women based on their marriage to a man, which allows them to name their husband on their child’s birth certificate even when the husband is not the biological father.  Because of Baskin [the 7th Circuit’s marriage equality ruling] and Obergefell, this benefit –which is directly tied to marriage – must now be afforded to women married to women.”

In addition to finding an equal protection violation, Judge Pratt found a Due Process violation because in Obergefell the Supreme Court referred to both clauses of the 14th Amendment as a source of the freedom to marry.  Since the Supreme Court identified that freedom as a fundamental right, strict scrutiny would apply, and the state’s rationale for its position of this case was obviously insufficient to meet the “compelling interest” test, and Judge Pratt so found.  The judge concluded: “Given Indiana’s long-articulated interest in doing what is in the best interest of the child and given that the Indiana Legislature has stated the purpose of Title 31 is to protect, promote, and preserve Indiana families, there is no conceivable important governmental interest that would justify the different treatment for female spouses of artificially-inseminated birth mothers from the male spouses of artificially-inseminated birth mothers.  As other district courts have noted, the holding of Obergefell will inevitably require ‘sweeping change’ by extending to same-sex married couples all benefits afforded to opposite-sex married couples.  Those benefits must logically and reasonably include the recognition sought by Plaintiffs in this action.”

States Take Differing Stances on Parental Status of Same-Sex Partners and Spouses

Posted on: May 22nd, 2015 by Art Leonard No Comments

Legal observers have been predicting that the Supreme Court will rule this June in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have a right to marry under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and to have such marriages recognized by every state, but such a ruling will not necessarily settle all the issues of parental rights of same-sex couples that continue to divide the courts.  Litigation in four jurisdictions demonstrates the continuing problem of sorting out such rights.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on May 7 in Adoption of a Minor, 2015 Mass. LEXIS 248, 2015 WL 2095242, that the traditional presumption that a child born to a married woman is the legal child of her spouse applies to a lesbian couple, so they need not provide formal notice to their sperm donor that they are seeking a joint adoption in order to avoid problems if they travel or relocate outside Massachusetts.   But on May 20, the New York 2nd Department Appellate Division, in Brooklyn, ruled in Paczkowski v. Paczkowski, 2015 N.Y. Slip Op. 04325, 2015 WL 2386457, that the parental presumption does not apply to a lesbian couple, affirming a Nassau County family court ruling that the non-biological mother has no standing to seek a joint custody order for the child born to her same-sex partner.  In Oregon, the Court of Appeals ruled on May 13 in In re Domestic Partnership of Madrone, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 577, 2015 WL 2248221, that the question whether the former registered domestic partner of a birth mother should be considered the legal parent of the child turned on whether the women would have married had that option been available when the child was born, and in Wisconsin, Lambda Legal filed suit in Torres v. Rhoades, No. 15-cv-288 (U.S. Dist. Ct., W.D. Wis.), also on May 13, on behalf of a married lesbian couple denied the benefit of the marital presumption by state officials who have thus far refused to list both women as parents on their child’s birth certificate.

The cases each present somewhat different facts, but all of them implicate the question whether some form of the parental presumption should apply when children are born to a lesbian couple as a result of donor insemination.  The parental presumption, whether adopted as a judicial rule or through legislation, has differed in its strength from state to state, but has generally been applied by courts and government officials to ensure that a child born to a married woman not be deemed “illegitimate” and be entitled to the support of the biological mother’s spouse, and the presumption took on particular significance when married different-sex couples began to resort to donor insemination to deal with problems of male infertility, raising questions about the legal rights and responsibilities of the husbands.

In the Massachusetts case, petitioners J.S. and V.K., a married lesbian couple, filed a joint petition to adopt their son Nicholas who was born to J.S. in 2014, having been conceived through in vitro fertilization using a known sperm donor.  The women were married when Nicholas was born, and both are listed as parents on his birth certificate.  According to the opinion for the Supreme Judicial Court by Justice Fernande R.V. Duffly, the women “sought to adopt their son as a means of ensuring recognition of their parentage when they travel outside the Commonwealth or in the event of their relocation to a State where same-sex marriage is not recognized.”  They sought to proceed with the adoption without given notice to the sperm donor, contending that since he was not a legal parent of Nicholas, no notice was required.

 The family court judge denied their motion to dispense with the notice, certifying the question whether notice to a known biological father was required to the state appeals court.  The Supreme Judicial Court transferred the case directly to its docket, and concluded that such notice was not required.

Justice Duffly made clear that the parental presumption applied in this case.  “As to a child of a marriage who is conceived via artificial insemination or IVF, as here,” wrote Duffly, “[the statute] by its nature, contemplates that a third party must provide genetic material for the child’s conception.  Nonetheless, as is consistent with our paternity statutes and long-standing presumption of the legitimacy of marital children, [the statute] confers legal parentage only upon the mother’s consenting spouse, not the sperm donor.  It is thus presumed that marital children have only two lawful parents: the biological mother and her spouse.”  While acknowledging that there are contexts in which a sperm donor might assert claims to parentage, they did not apply in this case, where the sperm donor was not seeking any parental standing.  Thus, the court concluded, since the adoption statute “does not require the lawful parents of a child to give notice of the petition for adoption to a known sperm donor, we answer the reported question, ‘No.’  The order denying the petitioners’ motion to proceed with the adoption without further notice is reversed.”

 

The contrary ruling by the New York Appellate Division provides little rational explanation.  The case of Jann P. v. Jamie P. produced a startling ruling from Nassau County Family Court Judge Edmund M. Dane on June 30, 2014, holding that the state’s 2011 Marriage Equality Law, which provides that same-sex and different-sex marriages should be treated the same for all purposes of New York law, did not apply to the parental presumption.  The appellate division’s ruling abandoned the trial court’s decision to provide anonymity to the parties, identifying them as Jann and Jamie Paczkowski.  They were married when their son was born, but the marriage was a shaky one, and no adoption was undertaken.

When the couple separated and Jann sought a court order allowing her continued contact with her son, Judge Dane insisted that the parental presumption did not apply because it was physically impossible for Jann to have been the child’s biological parent.  On May 20, the Appellate Division echoed this conclusion.  “Here, the petitioner, who is neither an adoptive parent nor a biological parent of the subject child, failed to allege the existence of extraordinary circumstances that would establish her standing to seek custody,” wrote the court.  “Contrary to the petitioner’s contention,” the statutory provisions concerning the parental presumption “do not provide her with standing as a parent, since the presumption of legitimacy they create is one of a biological relationship, not of a legal status, and, as the nongestational spouse in a same-sex marriage, there is no possibility that she is the child’s biological parent.”

The court’s wording signals the archaic legal formalism of its approach to this issue.  Referring to “the subject child” as if this case did not involve flesh-and-blood people with emotional and psychological attachments – in this case, the bonding of a mother-child relationship extending over many months until Jann’s continued contact with her child was cut off – suggests that the judges were more concerned with  legal categories than human relationships, totally at odds with the underlying philosophy of family law, which is to strive to protect the best interest of children in disputes involving their parents.  The case cries out for reversal by the Court of Appeals or the legislature.

Surely, when the New York State legislature adopted a Marriage Equality Law that expressly provides that same-sex and different-sex marriages were to be treated as equal in all legal respects, it could not have implicitly intended to create an exception to the parental presumption statute.  And that statute is not written in gendered terms.  Section 417 of the Family Court Act states, “A child born of parents who at any time prior or subsequent to the birth of said child shall have entered into a ceremonial marriage shall be deemed the legitimate child of both parents for all purposes of this article regardless of the validity of the marriage.”  Clearly, the intent of the statute is to legitimize the birth of any child born to a married woman by recognizing both spouses as parents of the child.  The practice commentary published in the statute book states that this presumption “should apply to same sex as well as heterosexual married couples.”

The commentary cites a Monroe County decision from 2014, Wendy G.M. v. Erin G.M., 45 Misc. 3d 574, supporting this conclusion, in which the court ruled that a common law (non-statutory) policy could be applied to recognize the parental status of the biological mother’s wife.   Ironically, and inexplicably, the Appellate Division’s decision in the Paczkowski case cites the Wendy G.M. decision without acknowledging that it would support Jann’s standing to seek custody, making it seem as if the two decisions are consistent.  One wonders whether the judges whose names are attached to the Paczkowski ruling – Randall T. Eng, L. Priscilla Hall, Jeffrey A. Cohen, and Betsy Barros – bothered to read the Wendy G.M. decision.

The Oregon case is a bit more complicated.  Karah and Lorrena, same-sex partners, did not have a legally recognized relationship when Lorrena bore a child through donor insemination, although they entered into a registered domestic partnership after the child was born.  They had a commitment ceremony a few years before the child was conceived through donor insemination.  There was evidence, however, that Lorrena had expressed ideological opposition to marriage as an institution, and she testified that having the child was originally her idea and she never intended for Karah to be a legal parent of the child.  Despite their entering into a domestic partnership after the child was born, it seems that their relationship had deteriorated during Lorrena’s pregnancy, and the circumstances under which the domestic partnership papers were signed is disputed by the parties.  On the other hand, they had agreed to adopt a new surname, Madrone, and that name was used for the child’s birth certificate, both women being listed as parents.  After the subsequent break-up, Karah sought to establish her parental status, relying on a prior Oregon court decision recognizing parental standing for same-sex partners.  Today same-sex partners can marry in Oregon as a result of a court ruling last year, but that option was not available when the child was born.

The court of appeals determined that Karah’s parental standing should turn on whether the women would have married had that option been available to them at the time the child was born.  Thus, the court implicitly endorsed the view that if this same-sex couple had been married when the child was born, Karah’s parental status would have been the same as that of a husband who had consented to his wife becoming pregnant through donor insemination, applying the statutory parental presumption.

The Lambda Legal lawsuit in Wisconsin seeks to vindicate the same principle.  Marriage equality has been available in Wisconsin since the U.S. Supreme Court announced on October 6, 2014, that it would not review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit finding that Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.  This includes, of course, a requirement that Wisconsin recognize same-sex marriages contracted in other states.

Chelsea and Jessamy became friends in 2001, have lived as partners in a committed relationship since 2010, and were married in 2012 in New York.  They live in Dane County, Wisconsin, and initiated the process of having a child together in 2013, using the services of a fertility clinic for Chelsea to conceive through assisted reproductive technology.  Their child was born in March 2015 in Madison, and they filled out forms to obtain a birth certificate listing both of them as parents.  But when they received the “Notification of Birth Certificate Registration” from the state’s Department of Health Services, Chelsea was listed as the only parent.  Their lawyer corresponded with the Department, but the response was that DHS was “evaluating” the situation, and as of the filing of their complaint in the U.S. District Court on May 13, they had not received a correct birth certificate listing both of them as parents.

Their complaint points out that a Wisconsin statute embodies the parental presumption and applies it to situations where a wife becomes pregnant through assisted reproductive technology.  Although the statute uses gendered language (referring to the husband and the wife), courts in other states, such as California, have held that such statutes should be construed as gender neutral in the case of same-sex married couples to be consistent with constitutional equality requirements.  Their complaint alleges that failure to apply the parental presumption and issue the birth certificate violates the couple’s equal protection and due process rights under the 14th Amendment.

It may be that once the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a marriage equality ruling these parental presumption issues will eventually be sorted out in a consistent manner, but the differing approaches of state officials and courts suggests that this is one issue that will require further work to pin down the practical implications of marriage equality once the basic principle has been established.

 

Australia High Court: Not Everybody is Male or Female

Posted on: April 3rd, 2014 by Art Leonard 3 Comments

Imagine a decision by the highest court of a country that begins by stating, “Not all human beings can be classified by sex as either male or female.” This is how the High Court of Australia beings its opinion in New South Wales Registrar v. Norrie, [2014] HCA 11, announced on April 2. According to the court, the New South Wales Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act of 1995 “expressly recognizes that a person’s sex may be ambiguous,” and thus lends itself to the interpretation that a person could decide that their own sex is indeterminate.

The case involves a person who uses only a first name, Norrie, born in Scotland “with male reproductive organs” and thus listed as male on a birth certificate. However, Norrie did not self-identify as male, uses feminine pronouns to refer to herself, and underwent a “sex affirmation procedure” in 1989. According to the statute, such a procedure might have either of two purposes: to assist a person “to be considered a member of the opposite sex,” or “to correct or eliminate ambiguities relating to the sex of the person.” Norrie, who had moved to Australia, sought surgery for the second purpose, but she “considered that the surgery did not resolve her sexual ambiguity.”

On November 26, 2009, Norrie applied to the New South Wales Registrar for her sex to be registered as “non-specific.” She accompanied her application, as required by the statute, with declarations from two medical practitioners, each of whom stated that she had undergone a sex affirmation procedure and that he supported her application to have her birth record altered to show her sex now to be “non-specific.”

The statute instructs the Registrar to rule on such an application by either registering the person’s change of sex or refusing to register the person’s change of sex, and such an application must be refused if the person is married. In response to the application, the Registrar wrote Norrie approving the application and an application Norrie had filed to register a name change. However, after having written to tell Norrie that her request for her sex to be registered as “non-specific” had been approved, the Registrar sent a second letter stating that it had not been approved, and the name-change certificate was reissued with Norrie’s sex designated as “not stated.” Norrie found this unacceptable and appealed to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal.

Before the Tribunal, the Registrar argued that his powers were limited to registering a person as male or female. The Tribunal found that Norrie did not identify as either male or female, and she would consider such an identification as false, but the Tribunal found that the Registrar was not authorized to register somebody as having a “non-specific” sex, because, in the view of the Tribunal, “the Act is predicated on an assumption that all people can be classified into two distinct and plainly identifiable sexes, male and female.” Norrie then took her case to the Appeal Panel, which dismissed her appeal.

Then, on to the Court of Appeal of New South Wales she went. The court sent the case back to the Tribunal for reconsideration because, it held, the Act “contemplated that Norrie might be assigned to a specific category of sex other than male or female such as ‘intersex’, ‘transgender’ or ‘androgenous’. This would require the Tribunal to engage in fact-finding to determine how to label her. The Registrar appealed this ruling to the High Court of Australia.

While the High Court acknowledged that under “ordinary usage of language, to speak of the opposite sex is to speak of the contrasting categories of sex: male and female,” under the terms of the statute and “the context in which it is to be construed, the Act recognizes that a person’s sex may be indeterminate.” That is, the statute says that a medical procedure can be undertaken “to correct or eliminate ambiguities” as to sex. This means, the statute recognizes that somebody may be other than simply male or female.

“The Registrar’s initial determination of Norrie’s application was right,” wrote the Court. “The appropriate record of her change of sex was from ‘male’ (as it may be taken to have previously been recorded outside of New South Wales) to ‘non-specific.’ To make that record in the Register would be no more than to recognize, as the Act does, that not everyone is male or female and that the change to be registered was from an assumed registered classification outside of New South Wales as a male to, as Norrie’s application put it, non-specific.”

The Court found that the Act doesn’t give the Registrar discretionary authority to insist that a person be registered as male or female when that person does not identify with either of those labels. “There is nothing in the text of the Act which gives support to the view that the Registrar must initiate, much less resolve, a dispute concerning matters of fact and expert opinions presented to the Registrar.” The Registrar’s job is to maintain the register “by recording information provided by members of the community.” While the Registrar might raise a question whether a particular application is submitted in good faith, the Court found that there was no question here of Norrie’s good faith in submitting the application, which “is not deficient in terms of the information required by the Act.” The medical practitioners whose views were submitted lined up with Norrie’s understanding of her own identity.

The Court rejected the Registrar’s argument that recording Norrie’s sex as “non-specific” would cause “unacceptable confusion,” stating that this problem would arise only “in cases where other legislation requires that a person is classified as male or female for the purpose of legal relations,” and as to that the Court could identify only the marriage statute, which in Australia limits marriage to the union of a man and woman and, at least as of now, that is not an issue with Norrie. “The Registrar during the course of argument did not identify any particular statute which could not be construed so as to operate as intended in respect of a person whose sex was recorded in the Register as ‘non-specific,” stated the Court.

Thus, the Court of Appeal’s decision was modified. Instead of sending the case back to the Tribunal for reconsideration, it was sent back to the Registrar to record Norrie’s sex as “non-specific” according to her application. Norrie is represented by Queen’s Counsel D. M. J. Bennett and A. J. Abadee (barristers) as instructed by DLA Piper Australia (solicitors). The Human Rights Law Centre submitted an amicus brief in support of Norrie’s position.