Recently, Gov Crist and AG McCollum had decided not to appeal a couple of gay adoption cases that had been winding their way through our courts. DCF has sent out memo’s to all offices not to ask about orientation when interviewing potential foster and adoptive parents. And I have found a few articles on the web stating that the law is “unconstitutional” and is deadfor all intents and purposes. However, I read today on facebook that our new gov-elect was considering re-instituting the ban and appealing the other pending cases. I was not able to find any verification of this online though.
The NPR article linked above states that only the State Supremes can strike down the law but the Yahoo article says it’s a done deal.
So, a question for doper lawyer types… Is Florida’s gay adoption ban really over? If not, what else needs to happen? Or alternately, what can Gov-Elect Scott really do?
The cases were not just “winding their way through our courts”, they had already been decided by the courts, and the state of Florida lost – those courts struck the law down.
The state (led by the Governor) can appeal those decisions, but it doesn’t have to. It can decide that it will probably lose the appeal, or just that it doesn’t want to appeal. Or just that the state (i.e., the current Governor) actually agrees with the opponents, and would like the law gone. The latter is probably the case here – the Governor & AG probably agree that this was a bad law.
The next Governor, once sworn in, can change direction, and decide to appeal these cases. (I presume there is some limit on how much time can pass before filing that appeal.) Then it goes back through Appellate Courts, and eventually to the State Supreme Court. Their decision is final within Florida (unless the losing side then tries to pass an amendment to the Florida Constitution to overturn the Supreme Court decision).
A new Governor re-instituting the ban after the courts have struck it down is not proper. He should file an appeal, and then ask the court to stay implementation of its decision while the appeal is pending. If the court does issue such a stay, then he can re-institute the ban. But in practice, he could just re-institute the ban in the state without a stay – that would effectively be a defiance of the court rulings, but such things have happened in the South before.
Thanks for the response. I was hoping for a different answer but I was pretty sure I was going to be disappointed…