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U.S. Supreme Court reverses Alabama ruling against lesbian adoption in Georgia

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday unanimously ruled in favor of an Alabama woman who sought legal custody after splitting up with her same-sex partner. The nation’s high court ruled that the Alabama Supreme Court had failed to give “full faith and credit” to the Georgia court’s decision granting the adoption.

Alabama’s court had previously ruled that Georgia courts violated their own state laws in granting the adoptions of three children “V.L.”—as she is identified in court papers—shared with her former longtime partner, “E.L.,” and therefore did not deserve custody or visitation with the children. V.L. adopted the children whom E.L. delivered after becoming pregnant from a donor. The couple later broke up in Alabama, where they lived.

“The Georgia judgment appears on its face to have been issued by a court with jurisdiction, and there is no established Georgia law to the contrary,” the Supreme Court wrote in the opinion. “It follows that the Alabama Supreme Court erred in refusing to grant that judgment full faith and credit.”

Click here to view the full decision.

It’s been a rough few days for the Alabama Supreme Court on the LGBT discrimination front, after Friday’s announcement that they had given up fighting the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality. However that didn’t keep notorious Chief Justice Roy Moore and other justices on the court from going out with one last flail, calling last summer’s decision “immoral, unconstitutional and tyrannical” and calling homosexuality “a disgrace to human nature.”