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| If Ya Can't Win, Just Cheat in Another State |
| 12.08.04 (6:29 pm) [edit] |
Lambda Legal Files Appeal in Virginia Court on Behalf of Lesbian Mother Unlawfully Being Kept from her Daughter
Janet Miller-Jenkins goes months at a time without seeing her daughter despite a Vermont court order requiring her former partner to allow regular visitation.
(Richmond, VA, December 8, 2004) -- In a case that has attracted national attention because it highlights the starkly different treatment lesbian and gay parents experience across state lines, Lambda Legal, ACLU of Virginia and Equality Virginia today appealed a case in Virginia on behalf of a woman who is being denied visitation with her child despite a clear court order from
Vermont.
Janet Miller-Jenkins is seeking to enforce a court order saying she must have regular visitation with the two-year-old daughter she and her former partner, Lisa Miller-Jenkins, had when the two women were joined in a Vermont civil union. After the women ended their relationship, Lisa moved to Virginia with the women's daughter, and she asked a Vermont court to dissolve the couple's civil union and sort out custody of the child. When that Vermont court ordered visitation for Janet, Lisa filed a new lawsuit in Virginia court, successfully using that state's antigay marriage law to have herself declared the child's sole legal parent. The conflicting court orders -- one from Vermont ordering regular visitation for Janet, and the other from Virginia naming Lisa the sole parent -- led to today's appeal, which asks a state court to overturn the Virginia ruling.
The appeal cites the federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act and Virginia's Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act. In this case, both laws make it clear that the Vermont court alone has jurisdiction in the matter and cannot be interfered with -- and the federal kidnapping law requires that the Vermont order be enforced in Virginia.
"The lower court in Virginia was way off base to ignore a well thought-out and effective federal law designed to prevent this kind of jurisdiction-shopping by parents who are unhappy with their custody arrangements," said Greg Nevins, Senior Staff Attorney in Lambda Legal's Southern Regional Office in Atlanta. "The marriage law Lisa's attorneys are using doesn't apply here -- federal law governing custody arrangements trumps it all. The Vermont court had already begun considering this case and it alone has jurisdiction over it. Period."
Lambda Legal, Equality Virginia and the ACLU of Virginia jointly filed today's appeal on Janet's behalf along with lead counsel Joe Price of Arent and Fox.
"My daughter has a right to have access to both of the parents she was born to. I'm in this for her -- she is all that matters," said Janet Miller-Jenkins.
LAMBDA LEGAL NEWS RELEASE, December 8, 2004
Contact: Lisa Hardaway: 212-809-8585 x266; pgr: 888-987-1971
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