Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
It looks like the end of the road, finally, in the Miller-Jenkins case. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled unanimously to uphold the appeals court ruling that Virginia has no jurisdiction over the visitation dispute between a former lesbian couple that was originally filed in Vermont.
This is the case where the couple had a child together, then the biological mother, Lisa Miller, later left and filed for dissolution of the Vermont civil union in the state of Vermont, calling Janet Jenkins the mother of the child and asking for child support. Then she became a born again Christian, decided that being gay was wrong and filed in Virginia to have all custody and visitation rights taken away from Janet.
The problem is that the Vermont court had primary jurisdiction and gave Janet visitation. Under federal law, once one state has issued a custody or visitation ruling, no other state may exercise jurisdiction in the case. The Virginia appeals court ruled that way and the Virginia Supreme Court has now upheld that ruling unanimously.
Naturally, the religious right media is furiously lying about the ruling. The Worldnutdaily claims:
The Virginia State Supreme Court whiffed today on an opportunity to preserve state sovereignty and solidify traditional marriage laws. Instead, the court upheld a ruling that may allow states like Massachusetts and Vermont to export homosexual marriage laws across the country.
Utter nonsense. This case has nothing to do with exporting anything, nor does it have anything to do with civil union laws. The Vermont court had jurisdiction because that's where Lisa Miller filed the case. Had she originally filed in Virginia and that court had issued a ruling, then Vermont would have no jurisdiction in the case under federal law. Expect much wailing and gnashing of teeth over this, all of it based on a flat out lie.
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It's a good victory, but the Chief Justice has stated he believes the appeals court's decision was incorrect. I just don't understand that. It seems like the law is about as clear as it can be in this case, so I'm not sure how he disputes the decision of the appeals court.
Posted by: Gerlach | June 9, 2008 12:20 PM
They say that like it's a bad thing.
Posted by: Dennis N | June 9, 2008 12:31 PM
Exporting gay marriage? Sounds good to me. After all, it is in short supply in 94% of the country.
Posted by: themadlolscientist | June 9, 2008 12:57 PM
To clear up a few things, first this was not an appeal of the Appellate Court ruling that PKPA applied; Lisa's lawyers committed apparent malpractice and failed to filed that appeal in a timely manner, so it was killed.
This suit came about when Janet attempted to file the Vermont Final Order with a Virginia Court to compel Lisa to allow visitation. Lisa used this opportunity to try to reopen the custody question, and was quite properly smacked down on the grounds that the matter was adjudicated in the prior case.
Thus, the VA Chief Justice is correct that the matter of how PKPA should be applied was not a future precedent for cases of this type: The VA Supremes could well decide that issues of multi-state custody could be governed by Virginia public policy, rather than PKPA. They would be wrong, and arguably in violation of the Supremecy Clause of the Constitution (there is a national version of PKPA, passed by Congress). Still, the VA Bar has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century (they only got around to merging Courts of Law and Courts of Equity in 2006).
Posted by: kehrsam | June 9, 2008 1:48 PM
I half expect the fundie mom to go underground to avoid obeying the law.
I hope the mother in Vermont gets FULL custody if she attempts it!
Posted by: SharonB | June 9, 2008 4:00 PM