ACLU Asks Arkansas Court to Bar Anti-Gay Group from Adoption Ban Lawsuit

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The ACLU of Arkansas last week asked the Circuit Court of Pulaski County to deny a motion for intervention by the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee in Cole v. Arkansas, the case challenging Act 1, which banned adoption or foster parenting by any person who is unmarried and lives with a partner.

The Arkansas ACLU chapter sued the state on behalf of more than a dozen families and is seeking to overturn that law which went into effect Jan. 1. In the suit, the families argue that the act’s language was misleading to voters and that it violates their constitutional rights.

The Arkansas Family Council Action Committee is the conservative group that campaigned for a new Arkansas law banning unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents and said it would make different arguments in defending the new law from the ACLU lawsuit. The Family Council previously has told the court that Arkansas Attorney General McDaniel couldn’t be trusted to adequately defend the law since McDaniel and Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe had both opposed the measure during the election.

AG McDaniel has said he has no plans to step aside from the case and a spokesman for Governor Beebe, said the governor is confident that McDaniel will properly defend the new law.

Court papers filed by the ACLU say that the Arkansas Family Council has no legal grounds to enter the suit in Pulaski County Circuit Court.

The ACLU argues that both the Family Council and the attorney general’s office had the same goal and that was defending the legality of the ban. They also said that McDaniel has a legal obligation to defend the new law, even if he and Gov. Mike Beebe opposed the measure during the election.

In a statement sent to LGR, Rita Sklar of the ACLU said…

The plaintiffs in this case are children and families who are directly impacted by Act 1: A grandmother who has been kept from adopting her own grandchild, a father who goes to a dangerous job every day not knowing if his own mother would be able to adopt his children if something were to happen to him and his wife, a mother who has already adopted one child from the state but is not allowed to adopt another, and over two dozen other families who can show how Act 1 jeopardizes their families. The defendants in the case are the state entities responsible for enforcing Act 1 and placing children in foster and adoptive homes.

The Family Council Action Committee claims that if it is not allowed to intervene it will be left “completely without a voice” – for the Family Council to claim it has been rendered mute on this issue is laughable. Is there anyone in the state who doesn’t know what their position is on this law?

We support the Family Council Action Committee’s right to speak out publicly about its position on Act 1 and its beliefs about families and parenting, which they haven’t hesitated to do. We also support their right to participate in the case like any other interested party by seeking to file friend-of-the-court briefs. But the judicial system would grind to a halt and the cost to taxpayers would be astronomical if everyone who is merely interested in a legal case could intervene as a plaintiff or defendant. And in this case, slowing the legal system down further only harms Arkansas children who are being denied homes because of this law and parents who are blocked from making their own decisions about who should adopt their children if something should happen to them.

No date has yet been set by the court for a hearing….