Court says lawmakers should butt out of state’s first same-sex divorce
A state appellate court had a message this week for Tennessee lawmakers trying to become legally involved in a same-sex couple’s divorce — butt out.
In an opinion authored by Tennessee Court of Appeals Chief Judge D. Michael Swiney, the court turned aside a push by 52 state representatives and 19 state senators to have a legal say in a Knox County divorce case — now settled — between Sabrina Witt and Erica Witt.
The court also ordered the lawmakers to foot the bill for the appeal.
“While the [legislators] apparently wish to force the actual parties to the suit, Sabrina and Erica, to continue their dispute in court, those parties have chosen not to do so,” Swiney wrote.
“Put simply, the divorce case is over, and there is no lawsuit left in which to intervene,” he wrote.
Knox County 4th Circuit Court Judge Greg McMillan — in the first such ruling in the state — in May granted Erica Witt the legal rights of a husband and father of the couple’s daughter, conceived through artificial insemination.
The couple were the first in the state to seek a divorce after the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2015 conferred marital rights to same-sex couples.
If Erica Witt had been a man, her parentage of the couple’s daughter would not have been an issue. There’s a specific law on artificial insemination cases, but it was written well before the same-sex ruling and referred to a “husband and wife.”
Erica Witt’s attorney, Virginia Schwamm, argued the Supreme Court’s ruling made that law unconstitutional.
Lawmakers, using a conservative legal group, sought to intervene in the Witts’ divorce — while at the same time pushing through a law that ordered courts to give “natural meaning” to words such as mother and father.
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery opined that law was unconstitutional. He argued the state’s law on artificial insemination was flawed, too — unless judges used “genderneutral” labels instead of “husband and wife” or “mother and father.”
McMillan refused to allow the legislators to intervene. They appealed.
The appellate court this week backed McMillan’s decision, saying the legislators had no right to involve themselves in citizens’ private lives.
“All of these issues are private rights and claims personal to the parties to the [divorce],” the opinion stated. “The actual case, a divorce, simply does not involve issues of great importance to the public and the administration of justice.”
Erica Witt and Sabrina Witt legally wed in Washington, D.C., in April 2014, bought a home in Knoxville and decided to have a child via artificial insemination from an anonymous donor. Sabrina Witt bore a baby girl as a result in January 2015. Because Tennessee did not then recognize same-sex marriage as legal, Erica Witt’s name was not placed on the baby’s birth certificate. Their marriage became legal in Tennessee after the June 2015 Supreme Court decision gave gay people the right to marry — and to divorce.