Lockhart et al v. Franklin et al

On December 10, 2018, a group of married same-sex couples, led by the Lockhart plaintiffs, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against state officials including Franklin in the United States. The plaintiffs alleged that the state's health department refused to list the non-biological mother on their child's birth certificate, in violation of their constitutional rights to equal protection and due process. The couples had conceived through assisted reproductive technology and sought the same automatic parental recognition afforded to heterosexual couples. The suit argued that the state's policy defied the U.S. Supreme Court precedents established in Obergefell v. Hodges and Pavan v. Smith, and perpetuated harmful discrimination against LGBTQ+ families.

The federal court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding the state's policy unconstitutional. The court issued a permanent injunction ordering the state health department to provide birth certificates recognizing both same-sex spouses as parents without discriminatory prerequisites.

Whether a state's refusal to issue birth certificates listing both same-sex spouses as legal parents violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The ruling reinforced the Supreme Court's mandate in Pavan v. Smith that marriage equality entails full parental recognition. It closed a discriminatory loophole used by states to deny legal parentage to LGBTQ+ non-biological parents, ensuring that children born to same-sex couples have secure legal bonds to both parents from birth, and set a precedent for similar litigation nationwide.