California weighs lesbians' parental rights

California's highest court was asked Tuesday to create a legal framework for what constitutes a family as justices weighed parental rights for lesbian couples who broke up after having children.
The state Supreme Court, hearing oral arguments in the cases of three women seeking child custody or support from their former partners, pondered whether children from same-sex households should be treated the same under the law as out-of-wedlock offspring of heterosexuals.
Attorneys for some of the women and the California attorney general argued that children should be given the same protections they would have with two traditional parents, since gays cannot marry and may have legitimate reasons for not registering as domestic partners or formally adopting their children.

They urged the court to apply long-standing laws governing absent fathers to estranged gay and lesbian couples who used reproductive science to conceive, a practice that leaves one partner without a genetic link to the family.
“It seems very unfair to this particular group of children to say that when assisted reproduction results in being born to unmarried same-sex couples, we can't establish parentage,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, arguing on behalf of a woman who wants to share custody of the daughter her ex-partner conceived with a sperm donor.
On the other side were two women seeking to retain sole custody of their children, and a woman who argues she should not have to pay child support for her former lover's twins. Their lawyers warned if someone without a biological, marital or adoption-related claim on a child can legally assert parental rights, it would open the door to all sorts of custody disputes.

“There will be no limit to the numbers of companions, be they related or not, to single parents making claims of parentage,” said attorney Diana Richmond, representing a woman seeking sole custody of the twin girls she bore with her former partner's donated eggs.
Several justices seemed inclined to side with the women who want their former partners to live up to the co-parenting arrangements they made when starting a family.
“The Legislature states there is a compelling state interest in establishing paternity for a child,” Associate Justice Joyce Kennard said.
But several other justices appeared worried about permitting someone to make a claim to parenthood simply because that person participated in the planning of a pregnancy and helped care for a child.
“That seems to open up a lot of possibilities for intrusion on the parent role by all sorts of people, practical strangers,” Associate Justice Janice Brown said.

In a sign of the broad acceptance same-sex parents have in California, the state attorney general's office supported the mothers who asked the justices for an updated interpretation of the state's parental rights laws. Several child-advocacy organizations filed friend-of-the-court briefs taking the same side.
Gay rights advocates said regardless of the ruling, they were glad the justices agreed to hear the cases.
“From our point of view, it's nothing less than that children born through reproductive technology to same-sex parents have the right to be treated equally,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

The court is expected to rule within 90 days.

Lisa Leff
24 May 2005

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LESBIAN_CUSTODY?SITE=CAWOO&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-05-24-08-38-13

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