The ACLU has gone to court to challenge Act 1, an Arkansas law approved by ballot initiative last November that bars unmarried couples from becoming adoptive or foster parents, the Advocate reports. The law is aimed particularly at gay couples, and the ACLU argues that the act’s language was confusing to voters. More broadly, Marie-Bernarde Miller, an attorney on the case, says that it “violates the state’s legal duty to place the best interest of children above all else.”
The suit was filed on behalf of more than a dozen families and will be presided over by Judge Timothy Fox, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He may be sympathetic to the plaintiffs: In 2004, he overturned a state ban on gay foster parents.
Image by Matt McGee, licensed under Creative Commons.
(Thanks, Feministing.)
