A federal judge sitting in Mobile issued a landmark ruling in January 2015, striking down Alabama’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in a case that began with a local couple’s fight to legally adopt a child they had raised together for years.
U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade found that both the state’s 1998 Alabama Marriage Protection Act and the later constitutional amendment enshrining it were unconstitutional. The ruling concluded that marriage is a fundamental right protected under the U.S. Constitution, and that Alabama had failed to show a compelling state interest sufficient to justify restricting that right for same-sex couples.
The case originated when two Mobile-area women sued after a Mobile County probate judge rejected a second-parent adoption petition, citing the state’s marriage ban. The women, who had legally married in California, argued that one of them should be allowed to formally adopt a young boy she had helped raise since birth. Both sides in the litigation agreed the adoption petition would have been approved as a routine matter had the couple been married under Alabama law as a heterosexual pair.
In her 10-page order, Granade, a Mobile-based judge appointed by President George W. Bush, rejected the state’s argument that the marriage ban served to protect biological family ties. She wrote that the state offered no real explanation for why prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying would help keep children connected to biological relatives, and found the law worked against its own stated purpose by denying children of same-sex parents the same legal protections afforded to children of heterosexual couples.
The Mobile ruling arrived amid a wave of federal court decisions on same-sex marriage across the country, most of which had sided with same-sex couples in the years leading up to a pending U.S. Supreme Court review. Granade’s decision specifically noted she found the reasoning of several appellate courts favoring same-sex marriage more persuasive than a contrary ruling from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that had upheld bans in several other states.
The plaintiffs’ attorney said he intended to ask the court not to delay the ruling, citing years of waiting his clients had already endured. The Alabama Attorney General’s Office signaled it would continue defending the state’s ban and asked the court to put the decision on hold pending further review, while acknowledging the case would likely be shaped by the outcome of the Supreme Court’s own upcoming marriage ruling.
News of the decision drew a mix of celebration and criticism locally, with reaction spilling out in downtown Mobile among both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage. The ruling marked the first of several pending Alabama same-sex marriage cases to be decided at the time, and it set the stage for a chaotic several weeks in which Alabama probate judges across the state grappled with conflicting guidance on whether to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.