Four same-sex couples filed a federal lawsuit yesterday challenging the constitutionality of the Mississippi law banning adoption by same-sex couples. Mississippi is the one remaining U.S. state that prevents them from doing so.
Lead counsel in the case, Campaign for Southern Equality v. Mississippi Department of Human Services, is Roberta Kaplan, who won the 2013 United States v. Windsor U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act. (Kaplan is also a lesbian mom herself.)
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on behalf of Kari Lunsford and Tinora Sweeten-Lunsford, who are seeking to adopt a child; Brittany Rowell and Jessica Harbuck, also seeking to adopt; Donna Phillips and Janet Smith, parents to a young daughter; and Kathryn Garner and Susan Hrostowski, who have a 15-year-old son. The Campaign for Southern Equality and Family Equality Council have joined as plaintiffs representing LGBT families across the state.
The plaintiffs argue that the consequences of the adoption ban are “profound and far-reaching.” In 2014, they say, 29 percent of same-sex couples in Mississippi, or 996 households, were raising 1,401 children in their homes—“the highest percentage of gay couples raising children of any state in the nation.”
Because of the ban, “the equal dignity of hundreds of families and thousands of children in Mississippi is disrespected and the significant and concrete rights, benefits, and duties that come with legal parentage are denied. . . . By denying these households in Mississippi the ability to adopt, the State does not encourage the stability or well-being of the family or community in which they live, it only undermines it.”
The New York Times, in its coverage of the case, cites Kaplan as saying, “the time was right to challenge the adoption ban and get it cleaned up.” The paper then opines, “That the case now seems more likely to be a mop-up operation than an all-out legal confrontation is an indicator of just how swiftly the social change has taken hold.”
True, although I daresay the outcome feels much more critical to the families involved. Not only that, but two of the couples are seeking second-parent adoptions—a procedure that might seem unnecessary now that we have marriage equality, but is unfortunately still needed. That’s another bit of “mop-up” yet to be done, so that couples who planned and are raising the biological child of one of them don’t need the intrusion or cost of a home study and adoption.
Bit by bit, however. Kudos to the four couples, their kids, Kaplan, and the organizations involved for their important part in this process.
