Arkansas rejects bill to let gay parents be listed on birth certificates
(PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images)
The US state of Arkansas has rejected a bill to allow same-sex parents to be listed on birth certificates.
The measure was rejected on Monday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The committee rejected the proposal by a voice vote, reports the Associated Press.
Under the bill, the presumption that a child has a mother and a father would be ended.
It was filed responding to the Supreme Court of Arkansas ruling from December that birth certificates will only contain the names of the child’s biological parents.
The ruling has come as a huge blow to same-sex parents who want to be named on the birth certificates of their children.
The court ruled in a case in which it reviewed a lower court’s ruling from December 2015, which had found that the requirement of having the biological mother and father listed on birth certificates was in violation of the constitutional right of adoptive same-sex parents.
In the previous ruling, Little Rock Circuit Judge Tim Fox first sided with three married lesbian couples, and then later extended his ruling to the entire state.
