Legal Commentary

Here is the decision.  Florida's Third District Court of Appeal struck down Florida Statute 63.042(3), which bars any person who is homosexual from adopting.  Significantly, the statute prohibited adoption by homosexual men and women, while allowing adoption on a case-by-case basis by people with criminal records or histories of substances abuse.  The state had tried to justify the law on the grounds that the prohibition was rationally related to the goal of placing children in households with "better role models" where they would face "less discrimination."  However, the statute specifically allowed single parent adoption, and it did not prohibit placing children with homosexual men and women as foster parents.  The court, after surveying the extensive evidentiary record from the trial court indicating that homosexual parents are in no way inferior to heterosexual ones,  concluded that there was no rational basis for the statute and that it therefore violated the equal protection provision of the Florida Constitution.  Congratulations to my colleague Joseph Jackson and my former colleague Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, who authored an amicus brief in the case together with dedicated faculty, staff, and students from UF's Center on Children and Families!