Supreme Court reverses Alabama court that denied lesbian woman's adoption
Source: USA Today
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously reversed an Alabama court's refusal to recognize a same-sex adoption.
The justices upheld a challenge brought by an Alabama woman after her state's highest court refused to recognize the adoption she and her former lesbian partner were granted in Georgia.
The couple never married and have since split up. But the case presented a test of an issue that crops up occasionally in state and federal courts since the Supreme Court struck down state bans on same-sex marriage: Can gays and lesbians be denied adoption rights?
The case was brought by "V.L.," as she is identified in court papers, against her former partner "E.L.," who gave birth to three children between 2002-04 while the couple was together. To win adoption rights for V.L., they established temporary residency in Georgia.
Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/03/07/supreme-court-gay-lesbian-adoption-marriage/78760574/?siteID=je6NUbpObpQ-7UUlBeq8Xz_TimkExErmFQ
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)and a unanimous decision?
So the conservative wing of the SC voted with the liberal wing to overturn the AL SC?
I love it.
rurallib
(62,451 posts)GGJohn
(9,951 posts)iandhr
(6,852 posts)Also there is a saying about broken clocks that come to mind.
cynzke
(1,254 posts)Major progressive decisions reached in the last few weeks with Scalia gone. There appears to be an effort for the remaining Judges to review and settle suits rather than end up in TIES. Hoping they will rule against the State of Texas regarding abortion restrictions.
0rganism
(23,971 posts)8-0 on this one. 7-1 last week. these aren't margins you can get past with just one more reactionary justice.
Orange Butterfly
(205 posts)Way to go new Supreme Court! Love the pattern here.
GOP's plan to withhold Obama's nomination is back-firing on them.
This is great to watch!
muriel_volestrangler
(101,368 posts)and then claim he was being 'originalist'.
Bad Dog
(2,025 posts)For once.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)This is already a much different Supreme Court.
Of course, it could be a ploy by a faction of justices to get us complacent about a liberal justice nomination from Obama.
And to add to the argument the next president better be a conservative.
Meanwhile, we'll take what we can get and celebrate it!
Let's hope this is real!
Maybe there will be a change now that Justice Crazy is gone? Hoping!
Stuart G
(38,449 posts)yellowcanine
(35,701 posts)Freepers must be immolating themselves.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)The Alabama Supreme Court had ruled the Georgia order of adoption was NOT valid under Georgia law. Technically the parties can still litigate this issue in Georgia, but I doubt they will, the US Supreme Court ruled that a state court MUST presume a judgement of another state court is valid, unless there is clear evidence to the contrary. Since the wording of the Georgia Statute in dispute has NEVER been challenged in Georgia, it must be given a widest interpretation by the courts of Alabama under the full faith and credit Clause. i.e Alabama must hold the Georgia decision to be valid unless a Georgia court rules otherwise.
Here is the actual opinion:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/15-648_d18e.pdf
V. L. v. E. L., ET AL.
ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF ALABAMA
No. 15648 Decided March 7, 2016
PER CURIAM.
A Georgia court entered a final judgment of adoption making petitioner V. L. a legal parent of the children that she and respondent E. L. had raised together from birth. V. L. and E. L. later separated while living in Alabama. V. L. asked the Alabama courts to enforce the Georgia judgment and grant her custody or visitation rights. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled against her, holding that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution does not require the Alabama courts to respect the Georgia judgment. That judgment of the Alabama Supreme Court is now reversed by this summary disposition.
I
V. L. and E. L. are two women who were in a relationship from approximately 1995 until 2011. Through assisted reproductive technology, E. L. gave birth to a child named S. L. in 2002 and to twins named N. L. and H. L. in 2004. After the children were born, V. L. and E. L. raised them together as joint parents.
V. L. and E. L. eventually decided to give legal status to the relationship between V. L. and the children by having V. L. formally adopt them. To facilitate the adoption, the couple rented a house in Alpharetta, Georgia. V. L. then filed an adoption petition in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia. E. L. also appeared in that proceeding. While not relinquishing her own parental rights, she gave her express consent to V. L.s adoption of the children as a second parent. The Georgia court determined that V. L. had complied with the applicable requirements of Georgia law, and entered a final decree of adoption allowing V. L. to adopt the children and recognizing both V. L. and E. L. as their legal parents.
V. L. and E. L. ended their relationship in 2011, while living in Alabama, and V. L. moved out of the house that the couple had shared. V. L. later filed a petition in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama, alleging that E. L. had denies her access to the children and interfered with her ability to exercise her parental rights. She asked the Alabama court to register the Georgia adoption judgment and award her some measure of custody or visitation rights. The matter was transferred to the Family Court of Jefferson County. That court entered an order awarding V. L. scheduled visitation with the children.
E. L. appealed the visitation order to the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. She argued, among other points, that the Alabama courts should not recognize the Georgia judgment because the Georgia court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to enter it. The Court of Civil Appeals rejected that argument. It held, however, that the Alabama family court had erred by failing to conduct an evidentiary hearing before awarding V. L. visitation rights, and so it remanded for the family court to conduct that hearing.
The Alabama Supreme Court reversed. It held that the Georgia court had no subject-matter jurisdiction under Georgia law to enter a judgment allowing V. L. to adopt the children while still recognizing E. L.s parental rights. As a consequence, the Alabama Supreme Court held Alabama courts were not required to accord full faith and credit to the Georgia judgment.
II
The Constitution provides that Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. U. S. Const., Art. IV, §1. That Clause requires each State to recognize and give effect to valid judgments rendered by the courts of its sister States. It serves to alter the status of the several states as independent foreign sovereignties, each free to ignore obligations created under the laws or by the judicial proceedings of the others, and to make them integral parts of a single nation. Milwaukee County v. M. E. White Co., 296 U. S. 268, 277 (1935).
With respect to judgments, the full faith and credit obligation is exacting. Baker v. General Motors Corp., 522 U. S. 222, 233 (1998). A final judgment in one State, if rendered by a court with adjudicatory authority over the subject matter and persons governed by the judgment, qualifies for recognition throughout the land. Ibid. A State may not disregard the judgment of a sister State because it disagrees with the reasoning underlying the judgment or deems it to be wrong on the merits. On the contrary, the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution precludes any inquiry into the merits of the cause of action, the logic or consistency of the decision, or the validity of the legal principles on which the judgment is based. Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U. S. 457, 462 (1940).
A State is not required, however, to afford full faith and credit to a judgment rendered by a court that did not have jurisdiction over the subject matter or the relevant parties. Underwriters Nat. Assurance Co. v. North Carolina Life & Accident & Health Ins. Guaranty Assn., 455 U. S. 691, 705 (1982). Consequently, before a court is bound by a judgment rendered in another State, it may inquire into the jurisdictional basis of the foreign courts decree. Ibid. That jurisdictional inquiry, however, is a limited one. If the judgment on its face appears to be a record of a court of general jurisdiction, such jurisdiction over the cause and the parties is to be presumed unless disproved by extrinsic evidence, or by the record itself. Milliken, supra, at 462 (quoting Adam v. Saenger, 303 U. S. 59, 62 (1938)).
Those principles resolve this case. Under Georgia law, as relevant here, the superior courts of the several counties shall have exclusive jurisdiction in all matters of adoption. Ga. Code Ann. §1982(a) (2015). That provision on its face gave the Georgia Superior Court subject matter jurisdiction to hear and decide the adoption petition at issue here. The Superior Court resolved that matter by entering a final judgment that made V. L. the legal adoptive parent of the children. Whatever the merits of that judgment, it was within the statutory grant of jurisdiction over all matters of adoption. Ibid. The Georgia court thus had the adjudicatory authority over the subject matter required to entitle its judgment to full faith and credit. Baker, supra, at 233.
The Alabama Supreme Court reached a different result by relying on Ga. Code Ann. §1985(a). That statute states (as relevant here) that a child who has any living parent or guardian may be adopted by a third party . . . only if each such living parent and each such guardian has voluntarily and in writing surrendered all of his or her rights to such child. The Alabama Supreme Court concluded that this provision prohibited the Georgia Superior Court from allowing V. L. to adopt the children while also allowing E. L. to keep her existing parental rights. It further concluded that this provision went not to the merits but to the Georgia courts subject-matter jurisdiction. In reaching that crucial second conclusion, the Alabama Supreme Court seems to have relied solely on the fact that the right to adoption under Georgia law is purely statutory, and [t]he requirements of Georgias adoptions statutes are mandatory and must be strictly construed in favor of the natural parents. App. to Pet. for Cert. 23a24a (quoting In re Marks, 300 Ga. App. 239, 243, 684 S. E. 2d 364, 367 (2009)).
That analysis is not consistent with this Courts controlling precedent. Where a judgment indicates on its face that it was rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction, such jurisdiction is to be presumed unless disproved. Milliken, supra, at 462 (quoting Adam, supra, at 62). There is nothing here to rebut that presumption. The Georgia statute on which the Alabama Supreme Court relied, Ga. Code Ann. §1985(a), does not speak in jurisdictional terms; for instance, it does not say that a Georgia court shall have jurisdiction to enter an adoption decree only if each existing parent or guardian has surrendered his or her parental rights. Neither the Georgia Supreme Court nor any Georgia appellate court, moreover, has construed §1985(a) as jurisdictional. That construction would also be difficult to reconcile with Georgia law. Georgia recognizes that in general, subject-matter jurisdiction addresses whether a court has jurisdiction to decide a particular class of cases, Goodrum v. Goodrum, 283 Ga. 163, 657 S. E. 2d 192 (2008), not whether a court should grant relief in any given case. Unlike §1982(a), which expressly gives Georgia superior courts exclusive jurisdiction in all matters of adoption, §1985(a) does not speak to whether a court has the power to decide a general class of cases. It only provides a rule of decision to apply in determining if a particular adoption should be allowed.
Section 1985(a) does not become jurisdictional just because it is mandatory and must be strictly construed. App. to Pet. for Cert. 23a24a (quoting Marks, supra, at 243, 684 S. E. 2d, at 367). This Court has long rejected the notion that all mandatory prescriptions, however emphatic, are properly typed jurisdictional. Gonzalez v. Thaler, 565 U. S. 134, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 1011) (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted). Indeed, the Alabama Supreme Courts reasoning would give jurisdictional status to every requirement of the Georgia adoption statutes, since Georgia law indicates those requirements are all mandatory and must be strictly construed. Marks, supra, at 243, 684 S. E. 2d, at 367. That result would comport neither with Georgia law nor with common sense.
As Justice Holmes observed more than a century ago, it sometimes may be difficult to decide whether certain words in a statute are directed to jurisdiction or to merits.Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U. S. 230, 234235 (1908). In such cases, especially where the Full Faith and Credit Clause is concerned, a court must be slow to read ambiguous words, as meaning to leave the judgment open to dispute, or as intended to do more than fix the rule by which the court should decide. Id., at 235. That time-honored rule controls here. The Georgia judgment appears on its face to have been issued by a court with jurisdiction, and there is no established Georgia law to the contrary. It follows that the Alabama Supreme Court erred in refusing to grant that judgment full faith and credit.
The petition for writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment of the Alabama Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)The basis of this decision is much narrower, which is why it was unanimous. State law (in Georgia, where the lesbian couple then resided) allowed such adoptions, and the Court ruled only that Alabama was required to recognize Georgia's action in granting the adoption.
The real test case will be that of a married same-sex couple, when one partner seeks to adopt the child (most likely the biological child) of the other, in a state that (unlike Georgia) prohibits such adoptions. The issue will be whether that state prohibition violates the Equal Protection Clause. My impression from the news report of the recent decision is that the broader question is still open to being litigated.