Arkansas ends halt in birth certificates

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas’ governor ordered health officials Friday to treat married lesbian and heterosexual couples the same when listing the parents on a birth certificate in an effort to comply with a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state’s birth certificate law was discriminatory.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s directive came hours after a judge blocked the state from issuing any birth certificates until it complied with the June ruling.

Arkansas stopped issuing and amending birth certificates for about two hours Friday morning after the injunction by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox, who also canceled mediation he had ordered between attorneys for the state and three same-sex couples to find a fix to the law.

“This case has been pending for over two years and it has been more than six months since the United States Supreme Court ruled the Arkansas statutory scheme unconstitutional,” Fox wrote in his order.

“There are citizens and residents of the state of Arkansas whose constitutional rights are being violated on a daily basis,” he wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with Fox’s 2015 ruling striking down part of a birth certificate law defining parents by gender.

That overturned an Arkansas Supreme Court decision. The state Supreme Court ordered Fox in October to come up with a way for the state to comply.

The law required the name of the husband to appear on the birth certificate when a married woman gave birth, regardless of whether he was the biological father. But married lesbian couples had to get a court order to have both spouses listed. The three couples who sued the state were allowed to amend their children’s birth certificates in 2015.