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Ohio Supreme Court building; gay couple holding a child
The court will be asked whether marriage equality rights recognized in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision can be retroactively applied to unmarried couples.
A child custody case before the Ohio Supreme Court is expected to have wide-ranging implications for some LGBTQ+ families. The case involves two women who started a relationship and family but broke up before Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court decision recognizing marriage equality. The case will decide whether that ruling retroactively applies to nonbiological parents in common-law relationships in the state, Court News Ohio reports. Lawyers will argue the case Tuesday.
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Priya Shahani and Carmen Edmonds were in a common-law marriage from 2003 to 2014. Edmonds claims the pair presented as married throughout the relationship. She says they traveled to Boston to get married but reconsidered because marriage equality was not recognized in Ohio, according to an amicus brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio on behalf of Edmonds. Shahani disputes the description of the trip to Boston and that she wanted to marry Edmonds.
In 2011, the couple decided to start a family. Due to Edmonds's health concerns, the couple chose to artificially inseminate Shahani using the sperm of an anonymous donor of Colombian descent, selected because he had the same ethnicity as Edmonds.
Shahani gave birth to the couple's first child in 2012 and twins in 2014. All three were given the hyphenated last name Edmonds-Shahani, but were not formally adopted by Edmonds.
The couple split in 2014 but shared the responsibility of the children, and Shahani still listed Edmonds as a parent at the children’s school. In 2016, the couple agreed to dissolve their “marriage like relationship” and set a visitation schedule.
In 2017, however, Shahani removed Edmonds from the children’s last names, moved the children to a different school, and instructed administrators not to provide information about the children to Edmonds. Since Edmonds was not recognized as a legal parent of the children, she was not notified of any of the actions by Shahani. The following year, Shahani filed to sever the original visitation agreement and asked to be recognized as the sole parent of the children. Edmonds also filed suit, asking for full recognition, visitation, and parenting responsibilities.
The courts have issued a series of conflicting rulings in the case. A juvenile court initially kept the visitation agreement in place but refused to recognize Edmonds as a parent. Edmonds appealed, and the appeals courts partially agreed, sending the case back to the juvenile court to explore whether the couple would have been married if marriage equality had been recognized during their relationship. Shahani appealed that ruling, and the case is now before the state’s highest court.
Edmond claims that the couple’s common-law relationship should enjoy the same recognition afforded under Obergefell v. Hodges, even though the couple broke up before that decision.
Shahani says the entire case is moot because the couple were never married, so the Obergefell decision should not apply to their case. She denies she ever intended to marry Edmonds but says that point is also moot because Ohio banned the recognition of common-law marriages in 1991.
Regardless of the decision issued by the Ohio justices, the case is expected to head to federal court with the potential to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
