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It’s a horrible ruling — this effectively places all same-sex couples who have completed second parent adoptions in a gray area and the door is now shut on any further same-sex couple adoptions of the kind in question, leaving our legislature to deal with the adoption statutes. That’s really bad news, since our GA just rolled over to complete GOP control in the midterms.
The case is Boseman v. Jarrell and involves Julia Boseman, North Carolina’s first openly gay member of the General Assembly (she did not run for re-election and leaves office this month) and her former partner Melissa Jarrell.
The state Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the adoption of Melissa Jarrell’s son by state Sen. Julia Boseman was invalid because a Durham County District Court judge waived a requirement five years ago that Jarrell had to give up her parental rights in the process.Under the adoption plan approved by the lower court, Boseman became an adoptive parent while Jarrell retained full parental rights as well.
…The majority of justices let stand another lower court ruling allowing the two to have joint custody of the child, saying it would be in Jacob’s best interest for the women, who have been sharing parental responsibilities, to rear him.
Still, the ruling eliminates a method for same-sex couples to adopt and could raise legal questions about so-called “second parent” adoptions like this one. They have been granted in Durham and Orange counties in recent years, according to testimony and court documents.
With the wingnuts poised to re-introduce a marriage discrimination amendment next session, we’re about to enter a really challenging period for civil rights progress.
The sad part about the GOP rollover is that it’s not based on any trend toward conservatism (see Richard Burrs’ DADT repeal vote); the midterm switchover was due to the fact that the economy sucks and Dems were blamed. News14Carolina reported last week that the state just posted the largest job loss last month — 12,500. The elections were clearly a response to this continuing recession. But with that comes a huge hurdle for LGBT activists here as the wingnuts roll into office.
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along with the wingnuts rolling into officewill be the NOM buss rolling back into town. ugh, this decision is so incredibly ugly, especially on the heels of that really great adoption decision in Florida.
This is not good butit is not a total loss either. Read pages 17-23 of the decision. http://appellate.nccourts.org/…
It looks like a ruling that hurts a method for adoptions for our community, but the reading of the article it doesn’t seem like they were basing it on the fact that she is a lesbian, and aren’t saying that being gay makes you a bad parent, which would have been worse precedent.
Is this something that will go away when marriage equality is finally realized? I mean then wouldn’t a recognized marriage make them family in the eyes of the law?
it feels pretty awful to meWith all due respect to those saying that there were some good things in this ruling–as a parent whose partner utilized the second-parent adoption option to adopt my biological children, I am terrified, sad, and enraged by this. “Joint legal custody” does not a parent make in the eyes of the law. And the idea of the incoming GOP-dominated GA pouncing on this ruling to ban gay adoption altogether is not far-fetched. I love my home state of NC but this shit makes my family feel very, very unwelcome.
Please don’t be terrifiedWhile most any opinion written by Justice Newby is not a good thing, the part giving the Supreme Court’s approval to the Court of Appeals’ recent Mason ruling (which affirmed some adoptions) should not be overlooked.
The result is an affirmation of the custody order although Newby’s majority uses some legal gymnastics to get there.
One of the most hopeful parts of the majority opinion:
I’m not pleased with this ruling, but I’m sure everyone on the other side isn’t either.