Italy court rejects gay adoption case

ROME — Italy’s constitutional court refused Wednesday to hear an adoption case involving two American mothers, putting aside the question during intense debate in Italy over legal recognition of civil unions and adoption by gay couples.

The court decided that the case presented by the tribunal for minors in Bologna was inadmissible.

The tribunal had pushed the adoption case to Italy’s highest court, which ruled Wednesday that the lower court had erred in treating the issue as a question of an adoption by Italians of a foreign child. The constitutional court said the case instead concerned Italian recognition of a foreign court’s ruling involving foreigners: the adoptions that were approved years ago by Oregon courts.

As a result of the tribunal’s error, the constitutional court ruled its petition inadmissible and declined to hear it.

Nora Beck, an Italian-American musicologist at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., her American wife and their two children moved to Italy in 2013 for a sabbatical year.

Beck, whose late mother was Italian and who spent summers and some academic years in the country as a child, had tried to pass her Italian citizenship on to the rest of her family but could extend it only to her 11-yearold biological son. Beck’s wife, Liz Joffe, gave birth to their 12-year-old daughter.

The women went to court in Bologna after realizing they had no legal rights over their nonbiological children, even though each had adopted the other’s biological child in the U.S. If Joffe died, for example, Beck would have had no custody rights over their daughter in Italy.

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