“What I loved about this brief is that it gave us an opportunity to show how important marriage equality is for families and children.”
Chip Phinney
Attorney
Mintz Levin
Same-Sex Couples Get Adoption Support
Across the United States, 100,000 children wait to be adopted. Yet in some states that banned same-sex marriage and allowed only married couples to adopt children jointly, gay couples have been discouraged or prevented from adopting. Children that were adopted by same-sex couples had legal ties to only one parent, and that left them vulnerable financially, psychologically, and in other ways.
With the connection between marriage equality and the well-being of children in mind, Donaldson Adoption Institute decided to partner with other child welfare organizations to present an amicus curiae brief in Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark US Supreme Court case that challenged the constitutionality of state same-sex marriage bans. The firm got involved when Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented separate sets of plaintiffs in the case, contacted former Mintz Levin attorney Aaron Tidman about working on Donaldson's brief.
Aaron reached out to attorneys Jonathan Shapiro and Chip Phinney — both of whom have extensive appellate backgrounds — for help in crafting a plan. Associates Kelly Frey and Mina Nasseri, and project analyst Katherine Fox, took on the bulk of the research and writing. The three divvied up the brief's topics, prepared outlines for Aaron's feedback, and then drafted their respective sections. "Our research showed great variation across jurisdictions in the laws affecting children adopted by same-sex couples," Kelly says, "and that made it challenging to present comprehensive and cohesive arguments to the Court."
Aaron edited the brief and sent it to Jonathan and Chip for further review. Edits flew back and forth, and the team completed the brief in about three weeks. The final, well-researched document presents a compelling argument that laws banning same-sex marriage harm adopted children in both concrete and psychological ways, and deter the adoption of children into stable, safe, and loving homes.
In delivering the Court's majority opinion overturning same-sex marriage bans, Justice Kennedy noted that hundreds of thousands of children are currently being raised by same-sex couples, and that bans against same-sex marriage harm and humiliate the children of these couples.
Aaron, who now works as in-house counsel for a company in the San Francisco Bay area, expressed his gratitude in playing a small part in the historic case, saying, "It was a privilege to help draft a brief presenting the impact of same-sex marriage bans on adopted children, an issue of particular concern to Justice Kennedy and thousands of families across the country."
To Jonathan, the team's work not only resulted in an exceptional product, but demonstrated the firm's depth of talent. "Like raising a child, superior legal advocacy," he says, "takes a village."