Two same-sex couples are asking a federal court to order Kansas to change their children's birth certificates to include the children's adopted parents, not only their biological parents. Both couples conceived through artificial insemination.
According to a lawsuit filed today by the ACLU on behalf of those couples, Kansas has refused to recognize both parents in each couple on the birth certificates of their respective children, thus disobeying the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Judge Daniel Crabtree has already ruled in favor of plaintiffs suing Kansas over its same-sex marriage ban. However, his judgment was a “declaratory” one which did not compel the state to act or comply with Obergefell. Crabtree hoped the state would comply of its own volition. The lawsuit filed today aims to prove that intransigence to equality still remains.
Lawrence Journal-World reports:
[… T]he ACLU filed affidavits from three women who said the state was still not granting their marriages full recognition because it would not issue birth certificates listing both women in their marriages as parents of the children conceived through artificial insemination.
One of those affidavits came from Casey Smith, of Lawrence, who gave birth to a son in September. She and her wife, Jessica Smith, an assistant soccer coach at Kansas University, were married in California in 2013.
The other affidavits came from Christa Gonser and her wife, Carrie Hunt, who live in the Kansas City area. They were married in Canada in 2007.
Hunt gave birth Sept. 22 at Kansas University Hospital to twins that were conceived through artificial insemination.
Read, below:
Courtesy of Equality Case Files
