The Virginia Supreme Court will hear arguments tomorrow in the ACLU of Virginia’s case against the state’s Department of Vital Records for refusing to issue revised birth certificates for four adopted children of same sex couples. Virginia’s highest court agreed to hear the case in September after a Richmond Circuit Court ruled earlier last year that Vital Records did not have to issue the new birth certificates
It is common practice for the Department of Vital Records to issue revised birth certificates for adopted children in which the adoptive parents’ names are substituted for those of the birth parents. Ordinarily, such requests are handled through a simple administrative procedure. But when same sex couples sought to have their names placed on their adopted children’s birth certificates, Vital Records personnel refused.
Because Virginia does not allow same sex couples to adopt, the issue of entering names of gay or lesbian couples on new birth certificates does not typically arise. In this instance, however, the children where born in Virginia, but adopted by same sex couples under the laws of Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania. Only the Virginia Department of Vital Records has the authority to issue the new birth certificates.
“It seems that the spiteful anti-gay bias preached for years by Virginia’s public leaders has filtered its way down to a routine administrative procedure,” said ACLU of Virginia executive director Kent Willis. “These are legally recognized parents who, were they not gay, would have had their requests for birth certificates rubberstamped without a second thought.”
The ACLU initially challenged the state’s policy in Richmond Circuit Court in May 2002. The ACLU argued then, as now, that the state’s policy violates the state’s birth certificate statute, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which requires states to honor each others’ judicial decrees.
Lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the case are Rebecca K. Glenberg, legal director of the ACLU of Virginia; Michael Ward, David Lubitz, and Steven Tave with Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman, LLP, Washington, D.C.; and Michelle Zavos, Washington, D.C. The case is Katherine Anne Fisher Davenport et. al v. Deborah Little-Bowser et al.
ACLU of Virginia Contacts: Kent Willis, Executive Director, Rebecca K. Glenberg, Legal Director 804-644-8022
