Two years after a Kentucky county clerk stirred national attention for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a circuit judge in the same state announced he will no longer hear adoption cases involving gay parents, calling his stance on the issue "a matter of conscience."
Circuit Judge W. Mitchell Nance oversees family court, a division of circuit court, in Barren and Metcalfe counties in south-central Kentucky, which have a combined population of about 54,000. He issued an order Thursday saying he believes that allowing a "practicing homosexual" to adopt would "under no circumstance" promote the best interest of the child, he wrote in the order obtained by The Washington Post.
The judge disqualified himself from any adoption cases involving gay couples, citing judicial ethics codes requiring that judges recuse themselves whenever they have a "personal bias or prejudice" concerning a case. Nance's "conscientious objection" to the concept of gay parents adopting children constitutes such a bias, he argued.
Reached by phone Sunday night, Nance said he stood by his order, "based on the law, based on my conscience," and to "minimize any disruption in the litigation," he said. He declined to comment further on the order or on calls for him to resign.
Nance told the Glasgow Daily Times that he issued the order so there wouldn't be a lag if an adoption case was filed in his court concerning adoption by gay parents. Because Nance's court, the 43rd Circuit Court, has two divisions, the judge of the other division will hear any adoption cases affected by Nance's recusal.
"I don't have any plans to recuse myself from any [adoption cases], so it should not affect the ability of any same-sex couples to adopt in Barren or Metcalfe counties," the judge of the other division, Circuit Judge John Alexander, told the Glasgow Daily Times.
Charles Geyl, an Indiana University law school professor who specializes in judicial ethics, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that by issuing such an order, Nance could be violating his oath to uphold the law, "which by virtue of the equal protection clause does not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, religion or sexual orientation," he said.
"If he is unable to set his personal views aside and uphold the law -- not just in an isolated case, but with respect to an entire class of litigant because he finds them odious -- it leads me to wonder whether he is able to honor his oath," Geyl said.
Other groups, such as The Family Foundation, a Lexington, Ky.-based group that promotes "family-first conservatism," expressed their support of the judge's decision to recuse himself.
"When adoption agencies abandon the idea that it is in the best interest of a child to grow up with both a mother and father, people can't expect judges who do believe that to be forced to bow the knee," said Martin Cothran, a spokesman for The Family Foundation. "Judges have a right of conscience like everyone else."
Nance's recusal drew some comparisons to the case of Kim Davis, the county clerk for Rowan County, about 150 miles northeast of Barren and Metcalfe counties. Davis was jailed after she refused in the face of multiple court orders to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, saying she couldn't issue the licenses because her name was on them, and it violated her religious beliefs. Eventually, deputies in her office began issuing licenses. Kentucky's governor and General Assembly would later remove the name of clerks from the marriage licenses.
A Section on 05/02/2017