Attorney Robbie Kaplan
The same day an LGBT discrimination bill worked its way through the Mississippi legislature, same-sex couples won an adoption lawsuit in the case.
Attorney Robbie Kaplan, best known as Edie Windsor’s attorney in the case that overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, announced via twitter, “We just won Mississippi adoption case! So proud of our brave clients!”
Mississippi’s gay adoption ban was declared unconstitutional.
“And while Plaintiffs must undergo the adoption process to fully remedy their injuries, the current law imposes an unconstitutional impediment that has caused stigmatic and more practical injuries,” the U.S. District Court judge wrote in his decision.
He called the state’s defense of its statute “tepid.”
One of the plaintiffs is Donna Phillips, a woman who serves in the National Guard. She has a daughter with only her name on the birth certificate. She worries her wife, Janet Smith, wouldn’t be recognized as their daughter’s parent if something happened to Phillips or to their daughter while Phillips was deployed with the Guard. Allowing Smith to adopt, which is prevented by Mississippi law, would alleviate those concerns.
In the last line of the decision, the state is prevented from enforcing the legal code stopping the adoption.
