The ACLU is making a new push for same-sex marriage and second parent adoption rights.
The organization is using momentum from Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling to push its lawsuit.
Currently, same-sex couples can't jointly adopt children under state law. Aaron Sarver with the Campaign for Southern Equality says same-sex couples should have the same parental rights.
“You have a lot of families that have a situation where one parent has custody of a child but the other parent is a legal stranger to that child, so that leaves these families very vulnerable if an unfortunate life ending situation would ever happen and it has," says Sarver. "This is an important legal right that same-sex families will hopefully gain in the coming days or weeks as well.”
North Carolina used to recognize second parent adoptions, but in 2010, the state Supreme Court ruled them illegal for both straight and gay couples.
Meanwhile, a federal judge in North Carolina has lifted stays in two cases challenging the state's ban on same-sex marriages, a possible sign he's preparing to strike down the prohibition as unconstitutional.
Chief U.S. District Court Judge William L. Osteen, Jr. issued an order Wednesday lifting his earlier stays and dismissing all motions in the cases. The move came after the office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper filed documents with the court essentially dropping all further defense of the 2012 ban approved by voters.
Osteen had issued the stays in July, after Virginia's same-sex marriage ban was struck down by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, which has jurisdiction over North Carolina. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal of the Virginia case.
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