Melissa and Aaron Klein, proprietors of the now-defunct “Sweetcakes by Melissa” custom-cake business in Gresham, Oregon, filed a petition for certiorari on October 19, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the $135,000 penalty imposed by Oregon authorities for their refusal to make a wedding cake for Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman in January 2013. Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, No. ____ , seeking review of Klein v. Oregon Bureau … <Read More>
same-sex marriage
Federal Magistrate Rejects Retroactive Marital Privilege Claim for Connecticut Couple in Antitrust Case
In Antech Diagnostics, Inc. v. Veterinary Oncology and Hematology Center, LLC, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82947, 2018 WL 2254543 (D. Conn., May 17, 2018), U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam had to deal with a claim by defendants that certain correspondence between two men (one of them a named defendant) that was sought in discovery by the plaintiffs was protected by marital privilege. Judge Merriam’s opinion does not set out the underlying facts … <Read More>
Can Three Parents Make a Family in New York?
In an opinion issued on April 10, New York Family Court Judge Carol Goldstein confronted the question whether there can be a third parent – an adult with legal rights to seek custody and visitation of a child who already has two legal, biological parents – in the context of a married gay male couple and the woman who agreed to have a child with them and share parenting. She concluded that the “non-biological … <Read More>
Mississippi Supreme Court, Rejecting Parental Status for an Anonymous Sperm Donor, Says Birth Mother Can’t Challenge Same-Sex Partner’s Parentage
Ruling on a custody contest between a birth mother and her former same-sex spouse on April 5, the Mississippi Supreme Court avoided mentioning the parental presumption that most states automatically apply for the spouse of a woman who gives birth to a child, relying instead on a doctrine called “equitable estoppel” to prevent the birth mother from contesting her former spouse’s parental status.
Although none of the five written opinions signed by different combinations of … <Read More>
Iowa Appeals Court Affirms Ruling Against Lesbian’s Brother Attempting to Invalidate Bequest to Her Surviving Partner
David Lance Wilson struck out in his attempt to get the Iowa courts to hold that a provision in his late sister’s will leaving her entire estate to her long-time partner, Susan Woodall Fisher, was automatically revoked when the women allegedly split up nine years before the sister’s death. Affirming a summary judgment ruling by Crawford County District Judge Patrick H. Tott, the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled on February 7 in Estate of … <Read More>
Foreign and International Courts Issue a Burst of LGBT Rights Rulings
Over the course of just four days, January 8 through 11, 2018, major courts on three continents have issued rulings that will affect the rights of tens of millions of LGBT people. On January 8, the Supreme Court of India ordered reconsideration of the 2014 decision that had restored the country’s law against gay sex, in an Order that quoted extensively from prior rulings critical of the 2014 decision. On January 9, the Inter-American … <Read More>
U.S. Supreme Court Denies Petition to Review Texas Supreme Court Ruling in Houston Benefits Case
On December 4 the U.S. Supreme Court rejected without explanation a petition from the City of Houston seeking review of the Texas Supreme Court’s June 30 ruling in Pidgeon v. Turner, which had cast doubt on whether the City was obligated under Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 marriage equality ruling, to provide same-sex spouses of Houston employees the same employee benefits offered to different-sex spouses.
A decision by the Supreme Court to deny review of … <Read More>
N.Y. Appellate Division Upholds Vacating Adoption by Father’s New Boyfriend on Petition by Father’s Husband
On September 28, 2017, a unanimous five-judge panel of the N.Y. Appellate Division, First Department, held that New York County Family Court Judge Stewart H. Weinstein had properly granted a motion by Han Ming T., the husband of Marco D., to vacate a May 2016 order that had granted an adoption petition by Carlos A., Marco’s boyfriend, to adopt a child conceived through gestational surrogacy using Marco’s sperm at a time when Marco and Han … <Read More>
Former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Seeks Reversal of His Old Court’s Opinion
On June 30, the Texas Supreme Court issued a ruling claiming that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell marriage equality decision from June 2015 did not necessarily require state and local governments to treat same-sex and different-sex marriages the same for government employee benefits purposes. On September 15, asserting that his old court’s decision was clearly wrong, retired Texas Supreme Court Justice Wallace B. Jefferson and lawyers from his Austin firm, Alexander Dubose Jefferson & Townsend … <Read More>
Texas Supreme Court Refuses to Dismiss Challenge to Spousal Benefits for Houston City Employees
In a clear misreading of the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling from 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges, especially as elucidated just days ago by that Court in Pavan v. Smith, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously refused on June 30 to dismiss a lawsuit by two disgruntled Houston taxpayers who argue that the city of Houston may not provide employee benefits for the same-sex spouses of its employees. The case is Pidgeon v. Turner, 2017 Tex. … <Read More>