Pavan v. Smith
Complaint filed 2015; SCOTUS ruling issued 6/26/2017
NCLR filed suit on behalf of two same-sex married couples seeking have their names on their respective child’s birth certificates. The state of Arkansas refused to name both parents of a same-sex couple on a child’s birth certificate, in violation of the US Constitution by treating married same-sex couples differently than other couples. The trial court agreed Arkansas’s birth certificate law was a violation of the constitution, which the state appealed. The Arkansas Supreme Court then reversed that judgment, and NCLR then petitioned the US Supreme Court, and on 6/26/2017 the Supreme Court ruled that the Arkansas birth certificate law “denied married same-sex couples access to the ‘constellation of benefits that the Stat[e] ha[s] linked to marriage’” and therefore violated the Court’s decision in Obergefell.
