U.S. Supreme Court Unanimously Reverses Alabama’s Anti-Gay Adoption Ruling

As if members of the LGBT community needed any more proof of how important it is that an anti-gay Republican NOT be elected to the White House in November, yesterday, the United States Supreme Court unanimously reversed an Alabama Supreme Court decision refusing to recognize a lesbian mother’s prior adoption of her three children. As a result of the ruling, the adoptive mother's rights to the children were restored.  The sad truth is that in a majority of states LGBT individuals and same sex couples continue to face bigotry and discrimination - always at the hands of god professing Christians and their political whores - with the federal courts being the only ultimate source of protection.  A press release from the Center for Lesbian Rights looks at this very important ruling.  Here are highlights:

(Washington, DC, March 7, 2016)—Today, the United States Supreme Court unanimously reversed an Alabama Supreme Court decision refusing to recognize a lesbian mother’s prior adoption of her three children in Georgia. Today’s summary reversal restores V.L. full rights as an adoptive parent.

“I am overjoyed that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Alabama court decision,” said the adoptive mother, V.L. “I have been my children’s mother in every way for their whole lives. I thought that adopting them meant that we would be able to be together always. When the Alabama court said my adoption was invalid and I wasn’t their mother, I didn’t think I could go on. The Supreme Court has done what’s right for my family.”

“The Supreme Court’s reversal of Alabama’s unprecedented decision to void an adoption from another state is a victory not only for our client but for thousands of adopted families,” said National Center for Lesbian Rights Family Law Director Cathy Sakimura, who is representing V.L. “No adoptive parent or child should have to face the uncertainty and loss of being separated years after their adoption just because another state’s court disagrees with the law that was applied in their adoption.”

V.L and E.L. were in a long-term same-sex relationship in which they planned for and raised three children together, using donor insemination. To ensure that both had secure parental rights, V.L., the non-biological mother, adopted the couples’ three children in Georgia in 2007, with E.L.’s support and written consent. When the two later broke up, E.L. kept V.L. from seeing the children, fighting her request for visitation, and arguing that the Georgia adoption was invalid in Alabama, where they live.

In September 2015, the Alabama Supreme Court issued an order refusing to recognize V.L.’s Georgia adoption and declaring that it is “void.” 

Before this ruling, no state supreme court had refused to recognize a same-sex parent’s adoption from another state—or any out-of-state adoption—based on a disagreement with how the court issuing the adoption interpreted its own adoption laws. Under the United States Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, states are required to respect court judgments, including adoption orders, issued by courts in other states. V.L.’s request said “this Court’s review of the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision is urgently needed” because “the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision flouts a century of precedent on the Full Faith and Credit Clause and will have a devastating impact on Alabama adoptive families.”

In December 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the Alabama court’s decision, allowing V.L. to have visitation with her children while the Court considered her case.

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore Again Proves He is Unfit for the Bench

Anti-gay extremist and modern day Pharisee Roy Moore

One of the most basic things that one learns in law school - actually in most high school government classes - is that the United States Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court rulings on federal constitutional issues trump ALL of the state constitutions and the rulings of state supreme courts.  Yet this simple concept is too much for mental midget and religious nutcase Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore who today released an order basically directing all Alabama probate judges (whose offices issue marriage licenses) to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hughes, that struck down ALL state gay marriage bans.  Moore is unfit for the bench - and I mean any court position - and needs to be permanently removed from the Alabama Supreme Court.  He is an embarrassment to the State of Alabama and makes a mockery of the judicial system.  As I have often noted, Alabama was far more sane 30+ years ago when I lived there compared to now when the state government seems controlled by ignorance embracing Christofascists.  Thankfully, some of the state's probate judges are ignoring Moore's invalid order.  The New Civil Rights Movement has details.  Here are highlights:

Wednesday morning Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore issued an order claiming the Supreme Court's ruling last June that found a constitutional right to marriage by same-sex couples applies only to the four states that were a party to the Obergefell lawsuit. It's a legal tactic the federal courts will at some point soon be forced into, but for now, according to Justice Moore, probate judges are not to be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Of course, if a probate judge actually follow's Moore's order, they may find themselves the defendant in a federal lawsuit.

For now, Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis, who was the subject of a related lawsuit over marriage licenses for same-sex couples, is once again refusing to issue licenses to any couples, as Buzzfeed reports. 

“Well, we have closed,” Russell Davidson, a supervisor of the court’s division that handles marriage licenses, told BuzzFeed News. “At this time, we are not issuing any licenses until further notice.”

But Montgomery County is taking a different course of action. One employee told Buzzfeed they “are issuing licenses until further notice. Our marriage department is open.”

And Montgomery County Probate Judge Steven Reed posted this tweet in response to Justice Moore's decree:

Judge Moore's latest charade is just sad & pathetic. My office will ignore him & this.

DeKalb, Limestone, Marshall, Lauderdale, Morgan, and Franklin Counties are all issuing licenses to all couples. Madison County is accepting applications but not issuing licenses until further notice. 

Meanwhile, the ACLU has some advice for Justice Moore and the probate judges of Alabama: this has already been decided in federal court.

And State Rep. Patricia Todd, who is Alabama's first openly-gay lawmaker, notes the same, that "Probate Judges are under a federal court order to adhere to the SCOTUS decision. If they follow Moore's lead they can and will be held in contempt in federal court." She told the Montgomery Advertiser if Judge Moore "wants to waste the taxpayers' money, go ahead, but we're not going backwards."

Mobile is a very nice city and Don Davis is seriously harming the city's reputation.  I'd also add that as a member of the Alabama State Bar,  I believe it is time for the Bar to call for Moore's removal from the Alabama Supreme Court.

Christofascist Hysteria Over Gay Marriage Continues - Will Alabama Defy SCOTUS?

One can only hope as the Christofascists become more deranged and hysterical in the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that more and more thinking Americans will realize that these "godly Christians" truly belong in a mental ward.  Preferably ones with high razor wire fences to keep the crazies locked within.  Over at Renew America, a SPLC registered hate group, on display are the spittle flecked rantings of Madeline Crabb whose bio first and foremost describes her as a "Christian."  Like most of the Christofascist authors, she has no credentials that make her competent to address issues of sexual orientation, gender identity or anything else and stripped of all the attempts at rhetorical flourish, her arguments rested solely on the Bible, a book authored by unknown writers who had a Bronze age knowledge of sexuality and thought the sun revolved around the Earth. 

In her diatribe Crabb attacks the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court as "mere men had nothing to do with creating marriage any more than they created the heavens, earth, or the very air we breathe."  Crabb, as is typical of Christofascists, conveniently ignores the fact that the Bible was authored by mere men - and ignorant uneducated ones at that - who in the case of the Old Testament had an agenda to keep Israelites separate and distinct from surrounding cultures and in the New Testament as ultimately comprised to maintain the power and control of the winning faction of the early Christians.  Here's a sample of her idiocy:

Five arrogant men and women declared themselves little gods, and chose to normalize same-sex partnerships, calling them "marriage," thus legalizing the accompanying activity that God calls an abomination: sodomy. (Actually, there's a plethora of other perverse activities homosexuals also do to "couple" that are simply too vile to speak about.) These judges supposedly "found" within the U.S. Constitution a "civil right" that for 239 years, legislators and much wiser judges were unable to find.

It would be easy to dismiss Crabb's rants as out of the mainstream Christian thought - the ravings of a lunatic if you will - yet in Alabama, two "Christian" groups are tying to convince the Alabama Supreme Court to defy the U.S. Supreme Court and ignore the Obergefell ruling.  SCOTUS blog looks at this craziness.  Here are excerpts (note the reliance on a ruling from 150+ years ago):

Asked by the Alabama Supreme Court for advice on what to do next on same-sex marriage, two conservative advocacy groups in the state have urged both direct and indirect resistance to the Supreme Court’s ruling mandating a constitutional right for gays and lesbians to wed.  The state court, the groups argued, has the constitutional power to refuse even to accept what the Justices have done, and has a constitutional duty to insulate state officials from legal risk if they do not obey the decision based on a religious objection.

The thirty-three-page brief was filed on Monday by the Alabama Policy Institution, . . . .and by the Alabama Citizens Action Program, an inter-denominational church support group, which earlier had persuaded the state’s highest court to block all of the state’s sixty-eight probate judges from issuing any marriage licenses to same-sex couples, even though all of them were under an order to do so by a federal judge in Mobile.  Depending on what the state court now does, it could set up a new federal-state collision that potentially could go to the Supreme Court.  Lower federal courts could take direct action against state trial court judges, but only the Supreme Court could review a decision by the Alabama Supreme Court on a federal constitutional issue.

The two probate judges said in short briefs that the state court had to respect and follow the binding ruling of the Supreme Court — the same position that Alabama’s attorney general has taken.

Aside from reciting at length from the Obergefell dissenters, the brief was focused heavily on the back-and-forth decisions of Wisconsin’s highest state court and the Supreme Court, over the power of a state court to order the release of an abolitionist, Sherman M. Booth, from federal custody on charges related to his role in arranging the freedom of a runway slave from Missouri.  The slave was never recaptured, but the Supreme Court, in the unanimous decision in Ableman v. Booth, ruled that the state court had no power to interfere with the prosecution of Booth. 

The Alabama groups’ brief noted that the state supreme court refused to accept the Supreme Court’s decision: “In the nearly 157 years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s purported reversal [of two state court rulings], the Wisconsin Supreme Court has never filed or accepted the U.S. Supreme Court’s mandates.”  What the state court did, the brief asserted, was done “in fidelity to the U.S. Constitution.”

When the federal courts engage in “unlawful acts,” the brief contended, state courts have the obligation to resist, even if that sets up “a collision” between state and federal courts.
The two groups devoted the last three pages of their filing to arguing that the state supreme court should do what needs to be done to insulate all state probate judges, and any members of their staffs from any punishment if they refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because of their religious opposition to such unions. 

As I have noted before, Alabama is far crazier now than when I lived there over 30 years ago.  WTF is in the water?

Quote of the Day: AL.com Slams Alabama Supreme Court

As noted in a post last night, the Alabama Supreme Court in a move reminiscent of the 1950's and 1960's issued a ruling ordering state court judges to ignore a federal court ruling invalidating Alabama's ban on same sex marriage.  The Alabama Supreme Court took this move despite the fact that the U. S. Supreme Court had refused to stay the lower federal court ruling thereby signally that a high court ruling striking down same sex marriage bans is likely towards the end of June this year.   AL.com - which disseminates stories from Alabama's largest newspapers - seems to be over Alabama ALWAYS being on the wrong side of history and took the Alabama Supreme Court to task over its insane ruling.  Here are the money quotes:

The Alabama Supreme Court has ordered Alabama's probate justices to stop issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

In doing so, the state's highest court has muddied the legal waters of Alabama, contradicting U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade's ruling that the Alabama Marriage Protection Act is unconstitutional and that Alabama's probate system should license same-sex marriages.

Our state leaders have argued that the federal court system's decision subverts the will of the majority, that an unelected federal judge should not holder greater authority over Alabama than her elected state judges or be able to overturn an Alabama law.

We feel compelled here to reiterate that the point of Granade's ruling is the U.S. Constitutional guarantee that in no state can the majority impose its will on minorities when it comes to unalienable rights.

Yesterday's decision does not change the definition of equal or unalienable in Alabama. It only delays the state's recognition of it.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to provide the final word on same-sex marriage in June; and we believe that Alabama's Supreme Court will find its decision does not hold legal weight.  . . . the [U.S.] Supreme Court denied Alabama's request for a stay, and that should have been the final word on the matter. History has demonstrated that, in constitutional matters, federal courts trump state courts. 

We continue to believe that, in June, the Supreme Court will rightly hold that the unalienable rights of Americans include the right to marry, for all. 

So how does one explain the action of the Alabama Supreme Court?  Two words - elected judges.  Sadly, in Alabama, the Christofascist have largely hijacked much of state government and justices on the Court fear having to face the knuckle dragging Christofascists come the next time they must stand for reelection.  Virginia's appointed judiciary has its problems, but compared to an elected judiciary, it looks pretty remarkable. 

Alabama Supreme Court Orders Stop To Same-Sex Marriages

 Raging bigots or legal mental midgets?

It would seem that Alabama has learned nothing from its history of being on the wrong side of history just about every time an opportunity has presented itself.  Be it supporting slavery, participating in the rise of the Jim Crow laws, turning a blind eye to the lynching of blacks, banning interracial marriage, maintaining sodomy laws, and now banning same sex marriage, Alabama has been in the wrong.  Now, in a testament to the shortcomings of elected judges, the Alabama Supreme Court has issued a ruling barring state court judges from issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.  Never mind that (i) a federal court ruled to the contrary, and (ii) the United States Supreme Court refused to block same sex marriages by extending a stay of the lower court order.  Seemingly, like Ken Cuccinelli and his cohorts here in Virginia, the Alabama justices are too stupid to grasp the concept that the U.S. Federal Constitution as interpreted by the federal courts ALWAYS trumps state law.  These justices apparently want their names remembered by history in the same vein as those on the Virginia Supreme Court when it twice upheld Virginia's ban on interracial marriage.  Here are highlights from AL.com:

Weeks after a United States District Court judge in Mobile ordered a probate judge there to issue same-sex marriage licenses, the Alabama Supreme Court has ordered a halt to same-sex marriages in the state. 

"As it has done for approximately two centuries, Alabama law allows for 'marriage' between only one man and one woman," the order said. "Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary to this law. Nothing in the United States Constitution alters or overrides this duty."

The order gives probate judges five days to submit responses if they want to show cause why they should be able to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. 

The order also gives Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis until Thursday to argue why he should not be bound by the order. Davis has asked the court to dismiss him from the lawsuit because he had been ordered by the federal district court to issue licenses to same-sex couples. 

Only Justice Greg Shaw dissented from the order, but he made clear that he did so because he thought the case had been filed incorrectly and the court did not yet have jurisdiction to hear it. In his dissent, Shaw argued that the federal court should have issued a stay against same-sex marriages until the U.S. Supreme Court had settled the matter.

David Kennedy, one of the lawyers who represented the Mobile couple who successfully challenged Alabama's same-sex marriage ban, said he does not think the ruling would survive a challenge in federal court.

"I don't really think that they can do that. I'm not surprised, but I'm somewhat appalled," he said. "The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the stay (on the order striking down the gay marriage ban) would expire on Feb. 9. On Feb. 9, same-sex marriage effectively became legal in Alabama."

Kennedy said he believes that probate judges act "at their own peril" if they choose to obey state courts instead of federal court. He said any couple denied a marriage license could sue in the federal district where they live.

He said the outcome should be clear.  "Whenever state law conflicts with federal law, federal law wins," he said.  

"The state is going to take such a black eye on this," said University of Alabama Law Professor Ron Krotoszynski, Jr.. "I think it's going to play very badly in the national media," he said, citing shows  like Bill Maher, John Oliver and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

"They're rejecting Judge Grenade's reasoning lock stock and barrel," Krotoszynski said.  Granade's reasoning is in line with more than 60 federal district judges who have ruled on the same issue since the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a port of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (or DOMA) in 2013, Krotoszynski said.

The next likely step is for one of the probate judges to file an emergency stay with the U.S. Supreme Court, Krotoszynski said. The situation could be "chaotic" between now and June when the U.S. Supreme Court is to rule on the issue anyway in a 6th Circuit case, he said.

"The Alabama state Supreme Court does not have the authority to interfere with a federal court order," said HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow. "This order is outrageous and baffling, and no amount of legalese can hide the bare animus that forms the foundation of this extralegal ruling."