Utah’s highest court lifted a stay blocking same-sex married couples from adoption.
This means the state’s Department of Health can issue birth certificates listing same-sex adults as a child’s legal parents.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Reyes’ office asked the state’s Supreme Court to lift the stay today (23 October).
This new course direction is connected to the repeal of the state’s gay marriage ban.
As reported by the activist group Lambda Legal, Utah prohibited an adult from adopting ‘who is cohabiting in a relationship that is not a legally valid and binding marriage under the laws of this state.’
That statute no longer applies to LGBTI couples who have been married in the state or out. Earlier this month the US Supreme Court declined to same-sex marriage appeals from five states – Indiana, Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia and Wisconsin.
‘This rectifies a major injustice,’ Troy Williams, executive director of Equality Utah, said to the Salt Late Tribune. ‘Families all over Utah are celebrating having their families united.’
According to a 2010 report from the Williams Institute, a think tank, approximately 30% of same-sex couples in Utah raise children under 18.
