They would like to get on with their lives, if it’s not too much trouble to Greg Abbott and the Fifth Circuit.
Austin lawyer Nicole Dimetman is pregnant and expects to give birth for the first time on March 15, lawyers trying to overturn Texas’ gay-marriage ban announced Sunday.
“The need for justice and equality has always been urgent,” San Antonio lawyer Neel Lane, of the firm Akin Gump Strauss Haurer & Feld, said in a statement. “This development — Nicole’s pregnancy — only underscores that. We hope the [U.S.] 5th Circuit [Court of Appeals] will do what it can to move this case forward expeditiously.”
Dimetman and 13-year partner Cleopatra De Leon, an Air Force veteran, were married in Massachusetts five years ago. They want Texas to recognize their marriage.
After they were married, De Leon gave birth to a boy, now four years old. Dimetman adopted him. But adoption is expensive and time-consuming, and the couple would like to avoid going through the procedure again, Lane said. He noted that while for heterosexual couples, the establishment of parental rights is automatic, De Leon would have to do the adopting this time — to be legally recognized as a parent of the child they’re expecting.
“More importantly, the child will be exposed to great uncertainty and insecurity if, for some reason, Dimetman is rendered incapable of caring for the newborn child,” Lane said. “For instance, if Dimetman did not survive childbirth, the baby could be an orphan without a parent directing the baby’s care.”
The appeals court hasn’t set a date for a hearing in the case. Most of the briefs have been filed, though Abbott is scheduled to respond to the plaintiffs’ latest arguments very soon.
Lane noted that a three-judge panel, yet to be named by the appeals court, will hear the Texas case and one from Louisiana. In the Louisiana case, a federal district judge ruled that state could ban same-sex marriage. Briefs in it are to be completed by Nov. 7, Lane said. So a November oral argument in the Texas case would be ideal, as Dimetman would like to attend, he said. It’s unwise for women to travel late in their pregnancies if that can be avoided, and as of next month, Dimetman won’t have entered her pregnancy’s third trimester, he said.
Their co-plaintiff Mark Phariss wrote an op-ed in support of Dimetman and DeLeon, basically daring the state of Texas to live up to its stated concern about “families”, which our leadership supports far more in the abstract than in reality. The concerns about possible complications with the pregnancy and their consequences are more than theoretical to Dimetman and DeLeon. I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I do not understand the morality of anyone that would work to make the lives of Nicole Dimetman and Cleopatra DeLeon and their children more difficult and less secure. I don’t know if the Fifth Circuit is going to abet justice or stand in its way in this litigation, but one way or another we need to get this show on the road.
That takes on an even stronger urgency now that the Supreme Court has denied petitions to hear appeals of the various appellate court decisions striking down state bans on same sex marriage. By doing so, all of the lower court decisions striking down those bans in Indiana, Wisconsin, Utah, Oklahoma, and Virginia will go into effect, which is to say same sex couples can legally get married in those states, and shortly thereafter in the other states within those judicial districts. If the Fifth Circuit upholds the lower court’s ruling in this case, it seems safe to assume that SCOTUS will let that ruling stand as well. If they overturn it, or perhaps if the Sixth Circuit beats them to it, then that ought to fast-track review. One way or the other, however, further delays are just foot-dragging in the hope of postponing the inevitable. Daily Kos, Texpatriate, TPM, and Unfair Park have more.
UPDATE: Good luck with that, Ted.