In re: Gill
| In re: Gill | |
|---|---|
| Court | Florida Third District Court of Appeal |
| Decided | September 22, 2010, in favor of Gill and his partner, who sought to adopt two foster children they had parented since 2004 at the state's behest, thus striking down Florida's anti-gay adoption law. |
| Citation(s) | 45 So.3d 79 |
| Case history | |
| Prior action(s) | Eleventh Circuit Court found in favor of petitioner, 2008; ruling had been appealed by the State of Florida. |
| Subsequent action(s) | On October 22, 2010, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced he would not pursue the case further, bringing the issue to a close. |
| Court membership | |
| Judge(s) sitting | Gerald B. Cope, Jr., two others |
| Keywords | |
| adoption, LGBT rights | |
In re: Gill is a landmark Florida court case that in 2010 ended Florida's 33-year ban on adoptions by homosexuals. In 2007, Frank Martin Gill, an openly gay man, had petitioned the circuit court to adopt two boys that he and his partner had been raising as foster children since 2004. Gill was prohibited from adopting by a 1977 Florida law prohibiting adoption by gay men and lesbians in that state. After a four-day trial challenging the law, on November 25, 2008, Judge Cindy S. Lederman declared the ban violated the equal protection rights of the children and their prospective parents under the Florida Constitution, and granted Gill's adoption request.
The state of Florida appealed the trial court decision. Oral arguments were heard by a three judge panel of the Florida Third District Court of Appeal on August 26, 2009. The district court upheld the trial court's ruling in favor of the plaintiffs on September 22, 2010, and the state declined to pursue any further appeals, thus effectively nullifying the anti-gay adoption statute, which the state no longer enforces.
In 1977, at the peak of the anti-gay Save Our Children campaign led by Anita Bryant to repeal a Miami-Dade human rights law, the Florida Legislature enacted a law prohibiting adoptions by homosexuals.
Several attempts were made in the state legislature to repeal the adoption ban, and there were several unsuccessful challenges in Florida courts, including:
In 1999, the issue was heard in federal court for the first time when the case of Lofton v. Kearney was taken to the United States District Court in South Florida, which upheld the state law in August 2001. The case was appealed to the U. S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. In May 2002 while the Lofton case was pending, eight former state legislators who voted for the 1977 ban, including the former Senate President and House Speaker, repudiated the law. Former representative Elaine Bloom said, "The hysteria of the times led us to do the wrong thing."
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