Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK - A circuit judge today stuck down Arkansas ban against unmarried couples adopting or foster-parenting children.

Act 1, passed by voters in 2008, unconstitutionally burdens non-marital relationships and acts of sexual intimacy between adults by forcing them to choose between becoming a parent and having any meaningful type of intimate relationship outside of marriage, Circuit Judge Chris Piazza ruled in a lawsuit challenging the law.

'This infringes upon the fundamental right to privacy guaranteed to all citizens of Arkansas,' the judge ruled in the lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

The state had argued that children are better off raised in traditional family settings, with married parents, and that the law should be upheld because it protects children from abuse and neglect.

The National LGBT Bar Association would like to thank the team at Sullivan & Cromwell and the ACLU, among others, for this important victory.

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The National LGBT Bar Association is a national association of lawyers, judges and other legal professionals, law students, activists, and affiliated LGBT legal organizations. The association promotes justice in and through the legal profession for the LGBT community in all its diversity. www.lgbtbar.org

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