Henderson v. Adams
Status: Victory
January 17, 2020: Victory! The 7th Circuit affirms both mothers must be listed on birth certificate of their child.
GLAD joined the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal and the ACLU on an amicus brief in this birth certificate case challenging Indiana’s refusal to include the names of same-sex spouses on their children’s birth certificates.
This case, which is currently pending before the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, concerns two married women who conceived a child through donor insemination and were denied the ability to list both their names on their child’s birth certificate. We argue that because Indiana allows different-sex spouses who conceive a child through donor insemination to list both spouse names on their child’s birth certificate, denying a same-sex couple the same right violates Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark marriage equality case, which holds that States may not differentiate between same-sex and different-sex couples with regard to legal rights.