GHOST DAD

SCOTUS Won’t Hear Gay Dads’ Birth-Certificate Appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an appeal from Mickey Ray Smith and Oren Adar, a gay couple who wanted both of their names to appear on their adopted child’s Louisiana birth certificate.

A Louisiana clerk had originally refused to issue a new certificate listing both men as parents, citing state laws barring unmarried couples from adopting children. She offered instead to list one of them, as single-parent adoption is legal in the state. (Yeah, that makes sense—better one person alone than two people without a piece of paper.)

In an earlier ruling, a federal appeals court said that the unmarried-couple statute, “attempts neither to encourage marriage nor to discourage behavior deemed immoral … but rather to ensure stable environments for adopted children.” It maintained that preventing both men from being listed on the certificate did not deny actual legal recognition of the adoption, which actually took place in New York State.

Sounds like its gonna be a crummy Father’s Day.

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