Adoption Law Center Applauds Overturn of Florida Law - Press Release
National Center for Adoption Law & Policy Applauds Court Decision on Florida's "Scarlet Letter" LawFLORIDA COURT STRIKES DOWN ADOPTION LAW
National Center Which Supported Challenge Applauds DecisionContact: Prof. Kent Markus, Director
614.236.6545
COLUMBUS, OH - April 24, 2003 – The National Center for Adoption Law and Policy praised a Florida appeals court ruling yesterday which struck down a Florida adoption law. The Center, which filed an amicus curiae (a "friend of the court") brief supporting the challenge to the statute, applauded the court's finding that the law unconstitutionally invaded the privacy rights of certain birth mothers who wished to place their children for adoption.
"This was a well-intentioned but terrible law," said the Center's Director, Capital University Law School Professor Kent Markus. Markus went on to say, "Its goal was to make sure that adoptive placements were stable - that a birth father could not come along after an adoption and mess it up. Unfortunately, it had the effect of dramatically impeding adoptive placements altogether. Simply put, there are much better ways to solve the underlying problem - especially ways which don't violate privacy rights and undermine adoption altogether."
The law, enacted just last year, required birth mothers unable to identify or locate the birth father of a child to publish extensive and detailed personal information about herself in various newspapers - including information about her sexual history - in an effort to afford the birth father an opportunity to assert a paternal interest in the child. The court did not consider the constitutionality of the statute to be a close call, noting in its decision: "[w]e deem the invasion of these [privacy] interests so patent in this instance as to not require [further] analysis..."
The National Center for Adoption Law and Policy is an adoption education, advocacy and reform organization located at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. The Center periodically files
amicus curiae briefs in cases pending in state and federal appeals courts when those cases significantly impact the formulation and development of the law of adoption.
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