By Marcia Coyle, From The National Law Journal

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reversed an Alabama Supreme Court’s refusal to recognize a lesbian’s nearly decade-old adoption in Georgia of her former partner’s three children.

“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,” the court stated in an unsigned “per curiam” opinion released Monday, without dissents.

In V.L. v. E.L., the justices acted on a petition filed by V.L., the nonbiological parent who had raised the children with E.L., the biological parent and her partner of nearly 17 years, until the couple separated and a custody dispute ensued.

E.L. fought V.L.’s visitation request and argued that the adoption order was invalid in Alabama. V.L. sought joint custody in Alabama circuit court based on her status as adoptive mother. That court and a state appellate court ruled that the Georgia adoption order must be honored.

The children’s guardian ad litem supported V.L. in the state courts. The American Academy of Adoption Attorneys and the Georgia Council of Adoption Attorneys also filed a state court brief supporting V.L.

However, the Alabama Supreme Court held that Georgia’s 2007 adoption law barred V.L. from adopting the children eight years earlier unless E.L. had relinquished her own parental rights, which she did not do. It held it could not give full faith and credit to the Georgia adoption order.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday stated, “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.”

When the couple decided to seek an adoption order, they lived in Alabama, but both women believed Georgia was more likely at the time to approve the adoption and so they rented a home in Atlanta to pursue the adoption.

In V.L.’s high court petition, her lawyer, Jenner & Block’s Adam Unikowsky, told the justices, “The Alabama Supreme Court’s decision not only has effectively stripped the parental rights of V.L., but also places at risk numerous other families in which parents have relied on the stability of adoption judgments issued by the courts of sister states.”

Unikowsky called the Alabama ruling a “grievous misinterpretation of the full faith and credit clause” with “far-reaching practical consequences.”

E.L.’s attorney, S. Kyle Duncan of Washington’s Duncan PLLC, told the justices that the Alabama Supreme Court correctly found that the Georgia court had no authority to award the adoption to the lesbian couple.

“Here, V.L. convinced a Georgia court to award her a type of adoption plainly barred by the Georgia adoption statutes—i.e., an adoption on behalf of a non-spouse that leaves intact the rights of the existing parents,” wrote Duncan.

The Alabama court’s decision is the first not to recognize another state’s same-sex parent adoption order based on a disagreement with the how the court issuing the adoption (in Georgia) interpreted its own laws, according to the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is participating counsel for V.L. in the case.

The court’s order in V.L v. E.L. is posted on originating website at link. Tony Mauro contributed to this report.

IMAGE: U.S. Supreme Court. Photo: Mike Scarcella/NLJ

For more on this story go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202751523995/Justices-Reject-Alabamas-Refusal-to-Recognize-Lesbian-Womans-Adoption#ixzz42K54dJ77