United States Supreme Court Reverses Alabama Supreme Court's Denial of Full Faith and Credit to Lesbian "Second-Parent" Adoption

Professor Ruthann Robson, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law

In a brief and straightforward per curiam opinion today in V.L. v. E.L.,  the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed the Alabama Supreme Court's denial of full faith and credit to a Georgia adoption involving a lesbian couple. 

As we discussed last September when the Alabama Supreme Court's opinion was rendered, it relied in large part on the dissenting opinion of a Georgia Supreme Court in a different case to support its conclusion that the Georgia courts did not have proper "jurisdiction" over the adoption. 

The United States Supreme Court stated that the Alabama Supreme Court's "analysis is not consistent with this Court's controlling precedent." It continued:

Indeed, the Alabama Supreme Court’s reasoning would give jurisdictional status to every requirement of the Georgia statutes, since Georgia law indicates those requirements are all mandatory and must be strictly construed. That result would comport neither with Georgia law nor with common sense.

As Justice Holmes observed more than a century ago, “it sometimes may be difficult to decide whether certain words in a statute are directed to jurisdiction or to merits.” Fauntleroyv. Lum, 210 U. S. 230, 234–235 (1908). In such cases, especially where the Full Faith and Credit Clause is concerned, a court must be “slow to read ambiguous words, as meaning to leave the judgment open to dispute, or as intended to do more than fix the rule by which the court should decide.” Id., at 235. That time-honored rule controls here. The Georgia judgment appears on its face to have been issued by a court with jurisdiction, and there is no established Georgia law to the contrary. It follows that the Alabama Supreme Court erred in refusing to grant that judgment full faith and credit.

That the parties to the case are lesbians - - - "two women who were in a relationship" - - - is made apparent by the United States Supreme Court.  This fact most likely figured largely in the Alabama Supreme Court's original majority ruling given the well-known hostility of its controversial chief justice to sexual minority rights.  However, given Friday's odd dismissal of the same-sex marriage litigation by the Alabama Supreme Court and today's United States Supreme Court definitive and unanimous reversal, it seems as if the opinions of Alabama Supreme Court Justice Greg Shaw (pictured below),  who dissented in E.L. as well as the earlier same-sex marriage opinions, has been vindicated.

Alabama Supreme Court Justice Greg Shaw