A federal judge in Mobile has postponed a hearing on a request to force Mobile County’s probate judge to immediately process an adoption petition filed by a woman who had previously won a lawsuit challenging Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage.
U.S. District Judge Callie V.S. Granade, whose Mobile courtroom became a focal point of Alabama’s same-sex marriage litigation, agreed to delay the hearing after attorneys representing Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis asked her to dismiss the newly filed lawsuit over the adoption issue. Davis’s attorneys argued the case was premature since the probate judge had not yet formally ruled on the underlying adoption petition.
The plaintiff’s attorneys countered that Davis had improperly signaled he would not hold a hearing on the adoption petition until the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on a separate case expected to resolve the same-sex marriage question nationally. Davis’s legal team maintained that the probate judge was treating the petition no differently than any filed by opposite-sex couples, and separately sought to block the plaintiff from compelling Davis to testify.
Judge Granade granted the postponement and set a schedule for further filings, giving the plaintiff’s attorneys until the end of the week to respond to the motion seeking to quash the subpoena for Davis’s testimony, with Davis’s attorneys given roughly another week to reply. No new hearing date was set as of the ruling.
At the center of the case is whether the woman can formally complete a second-parent adoption of a child she has raised alongside her spouse since birth. The couple, who legally married in California years earlier, filed suit against the state’s marriage ban after Davis cited the law in denying the adoption request. After Granade struck down Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage in a landmark ruling, Davis issued an order granting the woman temporary parental rights but held off on making that order permanent.
The dispute has continued to play out in Mobile’s federal courthouse even as legal observers around the country watched for the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling on same-sex marriage, which was expected to settle the broader question nationwide. Mobile’s federal court became an unlikely epicenter of that legal fight after Granade’s earlier ruling striking down Alabama’s ban drew national attention.
The case remains pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, based in Mobile, as attorneys for both sides continue to file responses ahead of a rescheduled hearing.