MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to get involved in a dispute between two former lesbian partners over visitation rights involving a 5-year-old child.
The child’s biological mother, Lisa Miller, had asked the justices to take the case because Vermont courts have ordered Miller to allow her former partner, Janet Jenkins, to see the child, Isabella, one week a month.
The couple entered into a civil union in Vermont in 2000; Miller had a baby daughter by artificial insemination and the couple later dissolved their union – similar to a divorce under Vermont law.
Miller took baby Isabella back to her home state of Virginia, said she had renounced homosexuality and become a Christian and refused to allow Jenkins to see the little girl.
Vermont courts later ruled that Jenkins has some parental rights in the case, and Virginia courts ruled that they would defer to Vermont’s rulings under a federal law designed to prevent people in custody fights from playing one state’s courts against another’s.
It was Vermont’s court rulings that the justices declined on Monday to take up. Separately, Liberty Counsel, a legal group opposed to same-sex unions, is asking the high court to reverse the Virginia ruling that Vermont’s court orders must be respected.
“This case shows that once a state adopts same-sex unions it will inevitably come into conflict with other states and the conflict will be quite a tangled web both legally and as it relates to the children involved,” said Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.
Supporters of Jenkins and of same-sex unions have sought throughout the litigation to describe the issues as a simple custody dispute between two parents whose relationship has dissolved.
Miller and her allies have relied on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which says that states aren’t bound to respect another state’s laws relating to same-sex unions.
“I think it’s awesome news,” Jenkins said Monday after hearing of the Supreme Court’s decision not to take the case. “I think the Vermont court orders were very clear. I think Virginia’s concurring order that Vermont has jurisdiction was very clear. I just see this as justice for my daughter Isabella, who now has access to her entire family, not just one member of it.”
In asking the justices to take the case, Miller’s lawyers said state courts in Vermont and elsewhere have “eviscerated the protections afforded each state” under the Defense of Marriage Act.
Staver said he was not surprised the high court had decided not to take the case “at this early stage,” and that it will have more chances in the future as more rulings come up on appeal from Vermont and especially Virginia courts.
Jennifer Levy, senior attorney with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, which has been representing Jenkins, said she doubted the Supreme Court would involve itself later, either.
She called Monday’s decision not to take the case “very significant in the sense that it affirms what the Vermont Supreme Court said about Janet being a parent and Vermont law controlling the decision.”
The case is Lisa Miller-Jenkins v. Janet Miller-Jenkins, 06-1110.
AP-ES-04-30-07 1801EDT
Send questions/comments to the editors.
