AP reports that the justices on Monday turned down an appeal from Lisa Miller, the biological mother of an 8-year-old girl. Miller wanted the court to undo a Virginia court decision allowing Janet Jenkins visitation rights with the girl/

Jenkins is from Vermont. Miller is from Virginia. They were joined in a civil union in Vermont in 2000.  Miller left Vermont and returned to Virginia to try and escape her shared parental obligations with non-bio mom Janet Jenkins.  Through years of legal battles and involvement by the courts in Vermont as well as Virginia, Janet Jenkins was finally awarded full custody in a Vermont Court.

After the Court awarded custody to Jenkins, Lisa Miller, with the alleged help of Christian Fundamentalist groups and her church, refused to hand over the child Isabella Jenkins-Miller, defying the Court order.   It is now believed that Miller is hiding with the child either  in Colorado or Ecuador.

SCOTUS is now refusing to hear the old Visitation appeal that stemmed out of Virgina.

In the meantime AP is also reporting that in MONTPELIER, Vt. — “The Vermont Supreme Court says a family court was right to award custody of an 8-year-old girl to her non-biological mother in a lesbian custody case. In a ruling released Monday, the court upheld a 2009 order giving Janet Jenkins sole custody of Isabella Miller-Jenkins. It rejected an appeal by attorneys for biological mother Lisa Miller.”

In essence the case ended and all was concluded back in 2008, but with the help of Liberty Council Attorneys, the  open pocket book of right wing fundamentalist support of Miller, this case has endured an extraordinary number of  attempts at appeal, to create a illusion that there was in fact any case to be had.  The right wing backers strategy of attempting to show a conflict between the Vermont and the Virginia Courts failed, back in 2008, when both States agreed on Janet Jenkins rights, and so in essence there has never been a legitimate  opportunity to continue to assert appeals; yet unconscionably this relentless attack on a lesbian mother’s right to custody has been allowed to persist.

Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com