Supreme Court denies cert in Adar v. Smith, leaves child without accurate birth certificate

This morning the US Supreme Court declined to review Adar v. Smith, the ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (en banc) that Louisiana need not issue an amended birth certificate naming as the child's parents an unmarried couple who adopted the child in another state. A gay male couple had adopted the child in New York.

I have written about the case extensively here, including the massive effort by Lambda Legal to gain Supreme Court review.

A denial of certiorari is not a seal of approval for a lower court's ruling, so it does not make the law worse than it already is. (As opposed to a loss in the Supreme Court, which has nationwide ramifications). That said, the ruling that stands is very bad. It is the crack in the door that other states, and their courts, may walk through to deny recognition to same-sex couples raising children in a variety of contexts. Its differential treatment of children with married parents and those with unmarried parents is also deeply disturbing.