The Supreme Court Rejects Opportunity to Roll Back Marriage Equality – By Mark Joseph Stern (Slate) / Dec 14 2020
Indiana asked the justices to strip rights from same-sex parents. They passed.
On Monday, the Supreme Court turned away Indiana’s attempt to strip equal parenting rights from married same-sex couples. The court’s decision ensures that same-sex couples in Indiana will remain the lawful parents of their own children, ending the state’s six-year-long crusade to remove their names from their children’s birth certificates. But beyond Indiana, Monday’s order also suggests that a majority of the justices aren’t eager to roll back marriage equality.
Box v. Henderson involves eight married lesbian couples in Indiana who conceived through artificial insemination. When a married opposite-sex couple uses a sperm donor, the birth mother’s husband is listed as the father on their child’s birth certificate. Genetics alone does not determine parenthood in the state. When married same-sex couples used a sperm donor, however, Indiana officials refused to identify the birth mother’s wife as the child’s second parent. Instead, they insisted that this spouse undergo stepparent adoption, an invasive, lengthy, and expensive process.
In 2014, the lesbian couples sued the state to place their names on their children’s birth certificates. A federal judge sided with the plaintiffs in 2016, but Indiana appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. After a mysterious 32-month delay, the 7th Circuit affirmed the judge’s decision. It noted that the Supreme Court already settled this issue twice. First, in 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, the court compelled states to provide same-sex couples with the “constellation of benefits” linked to marriage, explicitly mentioning birth certificates. Then, in 2017’s Pavan v. Smith, the court reiterated that states must place same-sex parents on their child’s birth certificate if that benefit is provided to opposite-sex parents who lack genetic ties to their child.
