Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill – Photo: Facebook.
Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a federal appeals court’s ruling allowing a lesbian couple to be listed as the parents on their son’s birth certificate.
The couple at the center of the case, Ashlee and Ruby Henderson, are a married couple from Lafayette who were blocked by county officials from being listed on the birth certificate of their son, who was conceived through artificial insemination and carried to term by Ruby.
In 2015, the Hendersons sued, challenging Indiana’s birth records law that does not permit the non-biological parent to be listed on the birth certificate.
In their lawsuit, the Hendersons argued that leaving one mother’s name off the birth certificate would present legal issues when it came to health insurance coverage, who could speak for a child at a doctor’s appointment, and enrolling in school or in intramural sports.
They also argued it was unfair to force one parent in a same-sex marriage to spend anywhere from $4,000 to $5,000 to legally adopt the child they are raising with their partner, reports NBC News.
The courts sided with the Hendersons in 2016, finding Indiana’s policy unconstitutional. The state appealed the ruling to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, and seven additional same-sex couples joined the Hendersons as plaintiffs challenging the policy.
In January 2020, the 7th Circuit ruled that under Indiana law, “a husband is presumed to be a child’s biological father, so that both spouses are listed as parents on the birth certificate and the child is deemed to be born in wedlock.”
As such, the justices maintained, a same-sex couple should be treated equally, with both spouses listed as parents regardless of biological ties to the child in question, in order to prevent discrimination.
Such laws, known as “presumption of parentage” laws, recognize the legal bond between a child and the non-biological parent who is married to the child’s biological parent, and are based on what is considered best for the care and protection of the child.
For example, such laws would recognize the male spouse of a woman who becomes pregnant by another man as the child’s father, rather than the biological father, based on the idea that the couple’s legal marriage — and the rights that derive from it — would provide a stable foundation for raising the child in question.
In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court found similarly in a case out of Arkansas, known as Pavan v. Smith, in which two lesbian couples sued over a state policy prohibiting the non-biological mother from being listed as a parent on the child’s birth certificate.
The court found that because Arkansas has a “presumption of parentage” statute, a child’s birth certificate is not merely a vital record, but grants married parents a form of legal recognition not available to parents of children born out of wedlock.
But Hill, in his capacity as Indiana’s attorney general, filed a motion in June asking the Supreme Court to review the 7th Circuit’s decision.
He has since followed that up with his latest petition calling for a reversal of the decision. In his most recent petition, Hill claims that the decision violates “common sense” and could threaten parental rights that are based on a parent’s biological connection to their child.
“A birth mother’s wife will never be the biological father of the child, meaning that, whenever a birth-mother’s wife gains presumptive ‘parentage’ status, a biological father’s rights and obligations to the child have necessarily been undermined without proper adjudication,” Hill wrote.
The case is the first to deal with issues tangentially related to same-sex marriage ever since the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Additionally, conservative justice Brett Kavanaugh had not yet been nominated when the case was decided, with Justices Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas arguing against listing both parents on birth certificates.
Some LGBTQ advocates have previously expressed fears that social conservatives, like Hill, will seize the opportunity to erode marital rights and privileges enjoyed by same-sex couples by challenging precedent in the Pavan case and other pro-LGBTQ rulings.
Karen Celestino-Horseman, the Herndersons’ attorney, said she expects Hill’s brief to be discussed by the Supreme Court during a Dec. 11 conference.
“We are hopeful the court will follow the precedent in Pavan,” Celestino-Horseman told NBC News.
A fundamentalist church in Indianapolis is defending a June 29 sermon in which a lay preacher urged congregants to pray for LGBTQ people to die and suggested they kill themselves.
The remarks, delivered by Stephen Falco during a “Men’s Preaching Night” at Sure Foundation Baptist Church, included multiple homophobic slurs, biblical references, and rants against Pride Month, LGBTQ rights, and what he called “disgusting” and “evil” behavior, according to TheIndianapolis Star.
"Why do I hate sodomites, why do I hate f****ts? Because they attack children," Falco ranted in the sermon, video of which was posted to Sure Foundation Baptist Church's YouTube channel. "They're coming after your children, they are attacking them in schools today, and not only schools, in public places, and they're proud about it!
Support for same-sex marriage has decreased over the past three years, driven by a drastic drop in support from Republicans, according to a recent Gallup poll.
Overall support for same-sex marriage among American adults stands at 68%, down from a high of 71% in 2022.
While 88% of Democrats and 76% of independents support same-sex nuptials, Republican support has tumbled from a high of 55% in 2021 and 2022 to just 41% in 2025.
It’s unclear what’s driving the trend. It could be that Republicans are changing their minds on the issue or that more socially liberal individuals are refusing to identify as Republicans.
On July 21, Wilmer Chavarria, superintendent of Vermont's Winooski School District, was detained for hours by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport after returning from a family visit to Nicaragua with his husband, Essex High School teacher Cyrus Dudgeon.
Officers seized Chavarria's phone and computer, separated him from Dudgeon, and interrogated him for at least five hours about his marriage and his job, according to Vermont's alternative weekly Seven Days.
During the interrogation, agents questioned whether Chavarria and Dudgeon were really married and repeatedly asked if Chavarria was actually a school superintendent. In an email to school board members, Chavarria described the experience as "abusive interrogation" and said he was "treated in a manner that is deeply disturbing and unacceptable."
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