Florida Bar supports fight against state’s ban on adoptions by gays

The Florida Bar supports gay adoption.

The Bar’s board of governors voted unanimously to file an amicus brief before the 3rd District Court of Appeal supporting a Miami-Dade circuit judge’s ruling that declared unconstitutional the state’s ban on gay adoptions.

“We thought it was appropriate to defend the judge’s decision,” said Nancy Gregoire, a family section member and a partner with Kirschbaum Birnbaum Lippman & Gregoire in Fort Lauderdale. “In my mind, speaking only for myself, it was the right thing to do and well past its time.”

Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman ruled in November that the state’s ban on gay adoption was unconstitutional.

Forty-two of 52 board members participated in the Friday vote. Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp’s chief of staff, Larry Ringers, filed the only recusal.

Bruce Rogow, a prominent constitutional lawyer and professor at Nova Southeastern University’s law school, said an amicus brief from the Bar could provide a persuasive argument in favor of gay adoption.

“It would be influential. It will say to the court that the leadership of the Bar agrees with the concept, and in these kinds of cases, the law can be made to do what you want it to do,” he said. “This is more of a policy situation than a constitutional argument, but we always wrap policy around constitutional arguments.”

The family law section’s five-page request to the board of governor’s offered an emotionally compelling argument in favor of adoption by the gay North Miami couple suing to overturn the ban.