Last I checked, adoptions fell under the full faith and credit clause. Once a kid is adopted in one state, that kid is adopted, and the people who adopted the kid are his or her parents.
Some states apparently think that adoption proceedings in other states don't apply to them. I wonder if the states would try to separate adopted kids from their "illegal" parents were they to move there.
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The other day I saw a letter to the editor that was saying something about how same-sex marriage should be a state issue, so any state that wanted it could choose. Maybe people have forgotten about full faith and credit?
As for this, it looks pretty unfair. I don't know. The state granting the adoption issued a joint adoption without recognizing the couple as married, right? Maybe Virginia views issuing a new birth cirtificate like affirming that the couples are married, or something like that.. In any case, I think what they're doing isn't right. The adoption happened legally and must be recognized by all states.
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No wonder adoptions are so troublesome. You have to change the "facts" of the child's birth every time they move into a new household?
I can't make an informed criticism of the opinion without seeing the legal details. It seems at first glance that enforcing the terms of the (U.S.) Constitution onto a state legislature might be a right confined to federal courts.
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I'm less concerned with it being the right venue, in which case legality should be followed, as that the legislature is trying it at all.
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There are children out there who were not getting any parental help.
Two people who happen to be of the same sex are dedicating their lives to these children.
They did not go to Virginia to change the law.
They just want paperwork that this child will need.
Instead the state of Virginia has decided to do what it can to stop what they consider the sinning of the parents. If it further punishes the child, well, that is the price the child has to pay for living with "Those kinds of people."
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Bringing up Dred Scott is comparable to bringing up Nazis. It immediately ends any rational discussion on the subject at hand.
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By the way, the Full Faith and Credit clause is one of those things where just about anybody can say to anybody else, "I do no thin it means what you thin it means."
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(I should note I have not read the findlaw case in full, but findlaw asserts that it supports the notion that "adoption proceedings in one State are not denied full faith and credit by the law of the sister State")
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I'm pretty sure I agree with this applicatino of the FF&C clause, also. However, there is less of a consensus on the meaning or application of the clause in general. That is, while a lot of people might agree on how it applies to a particular subject, like adoption (or perhaps not), you would be hard pressed to get as much agreement on many other subjects. Like marriage.
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I would be interested in what Virgian considers the status of the children in question.
Are they orphans?
If their parents gave them up for adoption and the state considers that adoption void, should they confiscate the child from these illegal care givers if the child enters the state of Virginia?
Can or should they arrest any mother who gave there child up for adoption to a same-sex couple, since the adoption is considered non-existant, the mother has basically abandoned the child and as such is a child abuser.
Can the biological mother still count this child as an exemption on their state taxes since the state doesn't recognize that the child has new parents?
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Never take Findlaw's summaries on faith - they're often very bad. In Hood, Holmes, in a remarkably short opinion, found that the Alabama statute of descent can constitutionally exclude children adopted by proceedings in other states.
"There is no failure to give full credit to the adoption of the plaintiffs, in a provision denying them the right to inherit land in another state. Alabama is sole mistress of the devolution of Alabama land by descent."
The same thing might be said about the issuance of birth certificates - Virginia is the sole mistress of who gets put on Virginia birth certificates. And of course, there might be a lot of cases after this one that speak on the issue - I don't feel like Shepardizing for a Hatrack post. These could make it go either way.
Legalities aside, I didn't know adoption caused birth certificates to be reissued. But I mostly agree with Dan's take on it - why punish the kid, even if you disagree with the other state's policies. It's not like Virginia could "rescue" the kid from the parents even if it wanted to.
I'm pretty sure the statute fugu13 posted would definitely keep Virginia from interfering with the custodial relationship. This case will speak to whether a state can extend ministerial services to some out-of-state adoptions and not others.
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I guess what I don't like about this is the pure pettiness of the whole thing. There are few things more dangerous than a petty beaurocrat and this, "you can't have that paperwork because we don't like your so-called parents behavior" is just petty.
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*makes note about findlaw's take on things*
Findlaw did mention something to that effect, but for another case that was being cited/
I guess I see the birth certificates as a legal acknowledgement of custodianship. The question becomes whether, since one state is legally required to acknowledge custodianship it is also required to provide such acknowledgement in the ways and means it is traditionally documented, or if the acknowledgement is purely a matter of treatment under the law.
If the state has a law that does not give the department in question discretion over whether or not to hand out modified birth certificates once custody has been ascertained, the situation becomes much clearer. However, I doubt many laws on the subject would consider that issue.
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One cool but annoying thing about law school - just looking at this issue here has given me 2 or 3 different ways I could brief it for either side.
It's good for being able to see both sides of an issue. Bad if you don't remember that legal does not equal right.
I think it comes down to whether or not reissuing a birth certificate is legally part of the acknowledgement; that is if the state has actually acknowledged the custodianship if they refuse to issue a birth certificate.
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posted
Why do they need birth certificates to be altered in the case of an adoption? The only reason I can think of this, is that the adoptive parents don't want the child to know the name of the birth parents. I don't think a birth certificate has anything to do with custody. Grandparents, godparents and other relatives get granted custody all the time, without birth certificates being re-issued.
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