New York Law School

Art Leonard Observations

Posts Tagged ‘Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’

Mass. High Court Gives OK to Non-Governmental Needle Exchange Programs

Posted on: June 14th, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

Giving a very close reading to Massachusetts statutes regulating the sale of hypodermic needles and authorizing the Public Health Department to set up needle exchange programs, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled on June 14 that there was no legal impediment to a private, non-profit group setting up a free needle-exchange program without the specific approval of local government authorities. The ruling came in response to an attempt by the Town of Barnstable to shut down a free needle exchange program in Hyannis, on Cape Cod, started by the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod, referred to throughout Justice Barbara Lenk’s opinion for the Court as ASGCC.  AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod, Inc. v. Town of Barnstable, SJC-12224, 2017 Mass. LEXIS 391 (June 14, 2017).

ASGCC started its “free hypodermic needle access program” in 2009, which it has been operating in Hyannis, Provincetown, and Falmouth. The program is intended to help reduce the spread of HIV and hepatitis C by making sure that injectable drug users have clean needles and no need to share used needles.  ASGCC made no attempt to get approval for their program by the local town government, probably anticipating that it would be controversial and likely denied.

According to Justice Lenk’s opinion, “ASGCC seeks to ensure that its clients use a clean needle every time they inject opiates or other drugs. ASGCC therefore conducts an initial assessment of each person who requests needles or other services and provides only as many needles as staff believe will be necessary so that the client will be able to use a clean needle for each injection.  ASGCC provides a collection receptacle for the return of used needles at its facility, encourages clients to return needles, and gives each client an individual ‘sharps container’ for storing used needles before they are returned, but does not require a return of the same number of needles distributed in order to provide additional needles.”

ASGCC also provide other free services such as medical case management, peer support groups, housing, nutritional programs, testing for HIV and other blood-borne conditions, and risk reduction strategies.

The current lawsuit got under way when town authorities claim to have discovered “improperly discarded hypodermic needles in public places” and determined that some of them came from ASGCC’s distribution activities. The town police hand-delivered a “warning” letter to ASGCC’s facility on September 22, 2015, and the town’s director of public health mailed a “cease and desist” order on September 23, 2015, threatening action against ASGCC if it continued to distribute needles.

ASGCC obtained assistance from GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), a Boston-based public interest law firm, which filed suit on their behalf in the Massachusetts Superior Court. GLAD attorney Bennett Klein argued that the town’s order was not authorized by law and sought an injunction against enforcement of the town’s cease and desist order.  Superior Court Judge Raymond P. Veary, Jr., issued a preliminary injunction and the case was certified for a quick appeal, eventually bypassing the Appeals Court and going directly to the Supreme Judicial Court due to the urgency of resolving the issue.

Massachusetts, like many other states, outlawed the sale, distribution and private possession of hypodermic needles except for those sold by licensed pharmacists to fill a prescription by a licensed physician. However, in 2006, in response to intense lobbying by HIV prevention groups and public health officials, the legislature amended the statute to regulate only sales, removing criminal penalties for possession, and authorizing the Department of Public Health to operate non-sale needle exchange programs with local approval.

In defending against ASGCC’s lawsuit, the town argued that under the statute needles can only be legally obtained in Massachusetts either from a licensed pharmacist filling a prescription or from the needle exchange program operated by the Department of Public Health with local government approval.

The Court agreed with GLAD’s argument that this is not what the statutes provide. For one thing, the criminal penalties for sale by anyone other than a licensed pharmacist do not logically apply to ASGCC’s programs, because they are not selling the needles.  They distribute them for free to those who qualify to participate in the program.  Furthermore, the only free needle distribution programs that require local government approval under the statute are those operated by the state Department of Public Health.

“The statutory language is clear that programs such as ASGCC’s are not prohibited,” wrote Justice Lenk, “the legislative history does not evidence an intent to the contrary, and interpreting the two statutes to allow private entities to operate non-sale needle exchange programs does not give rise to an absurd result,” contrary to the town’s arguments.

On the contrary, what the Court would consider to be “absurd” was the town’s argument that the statutes restricting sale of hypodermic needles apply to ASGCC’s free-distribution program, or that by authorizing the Department of Public Health to set up needle exchange programs, the legislature was somehow, without saying so, making those programs the only venue for free distribution of needles. Indeed, one could argue that by decriminalizing private possession of needles and restricting sales to licensed pharmacists, the legislature was leaving unregulated the free distribution of needles.  But the Court did not have to go that far, merely to find that there was no applicable statutory restriction that would support the town’s cease and desist order.

The town argued that the legislature had “anointed” the pharmacists as the “gatekeepers” of “sale and distribution” of hypodermic needles. But the statute does not forbid non-sale distribution by those who are not pharmacists. The town pointed to failed legislative proposals that would have specifically allowed non-profit groups like ASGCC to distribute needles, and argued that the legislature’s intent to ban such programs could be inferred from the failure to pass such bills.  The Court refused to go down the road of reading an affirmative legislative prohibition into the failure of the body to pass a bill.

The possibility that an adverse ruling in this case could spell the end of free needle distribution programs in Massachusetts drew wide attention to the case. The Court receiving a joint amicus brief from a wide array of HIV, LGBT, and professional public health organizations arguing against the town’s position.  Despite evidence that needle exchange programs administered by non-governmental community based groups have been effective at reducing the rate of HIV transmission through shared hypodermic paraphernalia, such programs are still controversial in many parts of the country.  Although the Court’s opinion did not explicitly review policy arguments supporting such programs, the opinion may add support to efforts elsewhere to establish such programs where they don’t presently exist.

 

Mass. SJC Rules Affirmatively on Same-Sex Partner Parentage Claim in Partanen v. Gallagher

Posted on: October 5th, 2016 by Art Leonard No Comments

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled on October 4 that the former same-sex partner of a woman who gave birth to two children through donor insemination during the women’s relationship can seek to establish full legal parentage of the children under the state’s statute concerning parentage of children born out of wedlock. Partanen v. Gallagher, SJC-12018, 2016 Mass. LEXIS 759, 2016 WL 5721061.

Although the state’s courts have in the past recognized various rights for co-parents in similar cases using a “de facto parent” concept, this unanimous ruling is the SJC’s first to take advantage of a law providing that “words of one gender may be construed to include the other gender and the neuter” to adapt a statute that was originally intended to allow unmarried men to establish their paternity of children born “out of wedlock” to their women companions, and to repurpose the statute as a vehicle to establish parental rights for unmarried same-sex partners.

Justice Barbara Lenk wrote for the unanimous seven-member court.

Karen Partanen and Julie Gallagher began their “committed relationship” as a couple in Massachusetts in 2001. The next year they moved to Florida, where they bought a house together in 2003.  In 2005 they decided to use donor insemination to have children.  The plan was for each of the women in turn to be inseminated.  Partanen’s attempt in 2005 was unsuccessful, but Gallagher’s subsequent attempt was successful and she gave birth to their daughter in 2007.  Gallagher was inseminated again in 2011, giving birth to a son.

These procedures were performed with the full cooperation and involvement of Partanen, who was present at the birth of the children. Partanen did not adopt the children, although in 2010 a Florida appeals court struck down the state’s statutory ban on gay people adopting children, but, according to her complaint in this lawsuit, she was fully involved as a parent, including personal contact, financial support, and decision-making.

After their son was born, the family moved back to Massachusetts. Although by then same-sex marriage was legal in Massachusetts, they did not marry. Shortly after the move, they ended their relationship and Partanen moved out.  She filed an action to establish “de facto” parentage in February 2014, requesting visitation and shared custody.  In September 2015, a Family Court judge ruled that she was a “de facto” parent, ordered visitation, and required her to pay child support to Gallagher.  An appeal of that ruling is pending.  Meanwhile, however, in October 2014 Partanen filed a separate action “to establish [full legal] parentage,” which Gallagher moved to dismiss, arguing that “full parentage” could only be achieved under the paternity statute by a biological parent.  Probate and Family Court Judge Jeffrey A. Abber granted Gallagher’s motion to dismiss the parentage case.

If one reads the relevant statute without taking into account the state’s general statutory directive on gender neutrality in interpretation, one could easily see the basis for Judge Abber’s ruling. The provision falls within the chapter of the state’s laws titled “Children Born Out of Wedlock,” Chapter 209C.  The statute extends to “children who are born to parents who are not married to each other.”  The various sections refer to “paternity” and authorize the courts to determine whether somebody is a child’s legal father. The statute recognizes a “presumption of paternity” in various situations.  The one most relevant here is that “a man is presumed to be the father of a child” that is born out of wedlock if “he, jointly with the mother, received the child into their home and openly held out the child as their child.”

Gallagher argued, and the trial judge agreed, that this statutory scheme was not intended to provide a vehicle for somebody to establish legal parental rights over a child to whom the party was not biologically related. The SJC disagreed, pointing out that the statute does not state anywhere that the person seeking to establish parental rights has to be biologically related to the child.  “While the provisions at issue speak in gendered terms,” wrote Justice Lenk, “they may be read in a gender-neutral manner, to apply where a child is ‘born to [two people],’” not just a man and a woman, and the child “is received into their joint home, and is held out by both as their own child.”  Consequently, she wrote, “The plain language of the provision, then, may be construed to apply to children born to same-sex couples, even though at least one member of the couple may well lack biological ties to the children.”

Furthermore, such an interpretation was in accord with the overall purpose of the statute, which, as “laid out in its first sentence, is to provide all ‘children born to parents who are not married to each other’ . . . the same rights and protection of the law as all other children.”

The court strengthened its interpretation with a telling analogy to the use of reproductive technology by different-sex couples. Clearly, a cohabiting but unmarried man and woman who resort to donor insemination to conceive a child because the man is infertile could make use of this statute to establish the man’s paternity without any express requirement in the statute that he prove a biological relationship to the child.  That is, in fact, one of the normal uses of the statute.  If the legislature intended to make sure that all children born to unmarried parents have the same rights, shouldn’t children born to unmarried same-sex couples have the same rights as well?

“Here, had [the children] been born to a married couple using artificial reproductive technology, they would have had two parents to provide them with financial and emotional support,” wrote Justice Lenk. “We decline to read into the statute a provision that leaves children born to unmarried couples, using the same technology, with only one parent.”

Furthermore, she pointed out that the court had in the past recognized an interpretation of another provision that also would “recognize parentage in the absence of a biological relationship,” a provision under which parentage may be established through a “written voluntary acknowledgment of parentage executed jointly by the putative father and the mother of the child.” The court held years ago that such an acknowledgment does not require that the putative father have any genetic relationship to the child.  Under this ruling, same-sex couples can avail themselves of the same provision.  This only works, of course, if both parents are willing to sign such a document.

Gallagher argued that because Partanen lacks a biological connection to the children, they were not “born to” her, and thus do not fall within the scope of the statute. She bolstered this argument by referring to a provision authorizing the family court to order genetic testing of the putative father on a “proper showing” by the moving party.  That provision was clearly intended to allow single mothers seeking child support from the biological fathers of their children to prove genetic paternity in order to subject the men to their parental support duty.  “Where, as here, the parentage claim is not based on a genetic relationship,” wrote Justice Lentz, “Gallagher, as a moving party, cannot show such testing would be relevant to the claim at issue, and therefore, no ‘proper showing’ is possible.”

Ultimately, the court concluded that the facts alleged by Partanen in her complaint should have been sufficient to withstand Gallagher’s motion to dismiss the claim, and if upon remand the trial court finds the factual allegations to be true, Partanen will enjoy the presumption of parentage authorized by the statute and can seek visitation and custody on the same basis as any other person who is presumed to be a parent. If the Family Court judge finds it to be in the best interest of the children, Partanen would be awarded the same custody and visitation rights that any legal parent could seek after parents have ended their relationship with each other.

Although Massachusetts courts had previously recognized the ability of same-sex partners to seek “de facto” parental status, which accorded some rights, the court emphasized that full legal parentage involves the same rights that a biological or legal adoptive parent would enjoy.

The court did not rule on alternative constitutional claims raised by Partanen, resting its decision entirely on construction of the Massachusetts statutes. The court’s opinion does not mention any attempt by Gallagher to argue that treating Partanen as a presumptive parent would violate Gallagher’s constitutional due process rights as a “natural parent,” so it is unlikely that she would be able to seek U.S. Supreme Court review of this decision.

Mary Bonauto, the Civil Rights Project Director at GLAD: Legal Advocates & Defenders, the Boston-based New England GLBT rights public interest law firm, represents Partanen with co-counsel Elizabeth A. Roberts, Teresa Harkins La Vita, Patience Crozier and Joyce Kauffman. Bonauto gave the oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 that led to nationwide marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges, and she also argued to the Massachusetts SJC in 2003, resulting in the nation’s first affirmative marriage equality ruling by a state’s highest court.

Jennifer M. Lamanna represents Gallagher. The SJC received amicus briefs, all in support of Partanen’s appeal, from: C. Thomas Brown for Greater Boston Legal Services; Emily R. Shulman, Brook Hopkins, and Adam M. Cambier for the American Academy of Assisted Reproductive Technology Attorneys; Abigail Taylor, Gail Garinger, Brittany Williams and Andrea C. Kramer for the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office; and Shannon Minter, Marco J. Quina, and Emma S. Winer for a group of law professors specializing in family law issues.  The case seems to have flown below the radar of groups that usually file opposition amicus briefs in such cases.

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.