GOVERNMENT OF
THE
OFFICE OF THE
ATTORNEY GENERAL
Tonya A. Sapp
Director of
Legislative Affairs
July 10, 2008
The Honorable Phil Mendelson,
Chair
Committee on the Judiciary
and Public Safety
Dear Councilmember Mendelson:
Thank you for providing OAG
with the opportunity to comment on Bill 17-726: “Domestic Partnership Police and
Fire Amendment Act of 2008” and Bill 17-727: “Domestic Partnership Judicial
Determination of Parentage Act of 2008”. Please find below a detailed presentation of
our comments or concerns about the above-noted bills.
Bill 17-726: “Domestic Partnership Police and Fire
Amendment Act of 2008”
This Bill amends the District
of Columbia Spouse Equity Act to give domestic partners equity in retirement
benefits and the Policemen and Firemen’s Retirement and Disability Act to
include domestic partners as survivors for purposes of police and fire
retirements. We support this bill.
Bill 17-727: “Domestic Partnership Judicial
Determination of Parentage Act of 2008”
1)
A significant
concern raised by the bill is that it conflicts with federal statutory
requirements applicable to the District’s child support program and could
therefore jeopardize federal funding for this program authorized under Title
IV, Part D of the Social Security Act, approved January 4, 1975, 88 Stat. 2351,
42 U.S.C. § 651 et seq. (IV-D
Program). Section 466 of the Social
Security Act requires each state to enact laws requiring specific procedures
governing various aspects of paternity establishment and child support
establishment and enforcement. Enactment
of these laws is a condition of the approval of the state’s State Plan for
child support.[1] Section 4 of the bill conflicts with section
466(f) of the Social Security Act, because it amends various definitions
contained in section 101 of the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act of 1995
(UIFSA), effective February 9, 1996, D.C. Law 11-81, D.C. Official Code §
46-301.01 (2005 Repl. and 2007 Supp.), to provide for the establishment and
enforcement of support obligations against domestic partners. Congress included section 466(f) in the
Social Security Act to facilitate the entry and enforcement of support orders
in interstate cases by ensuring uniformity of the state laws that control this
process. Section 466(f) therefore
requires each state to have in effect “the Uniform Interstate Family Support
Act, as approved by the American Bar Association on February 9, 1993, and as in
effect on August 22, 1996, including any amendments officially adopted as of
such date by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State
Laws.” If the bill’s amendments to UIFSA
were to be enacted, the 1996 version of UIFSA would no longer be in effect in
the District and the bill might therefore place the District out of compliance
with federal law.[2]
2)
The bill could
also complicate the District’s compliance with federal child support
requirements in a number of other respects.
The federal IV-D Program is structured around the goal of ensuring that
biological parents support their children.
It therefore requires state child support agencies to use specific
procedures to establish the paternity of biological fathers under circumstances
where a child’s legal relationship to his or her putative father is in
doubt. State child support agencies are
required to petition to establish paternity in all cases where a child has no
legal or custodial father and is receiving public assistance under Title IV-A
of the Social Security Act, or other federal benefits and services. 42 U.S.C. § 654(4). Given the federal focus on biological
parenthood, it is not clear that the presumption of parentage the bill extends
to domestic partners will satisfy the federal requirement for paternity
establishment, particularly in cases where the domestic partner is not or could
not be related to the child. If this
requirement is not satisfied, and the bill is not construed to establish the
parentage of more than two individuals, federal law could require CSSD to bring
legal actions to disestablish the parentage of domestic partners and establish
biological paternity in contravention of the policies reflected in the
bill. Further, for the purpose of assessing
financial penalties and awarding incentives, the performance of state child
support agencies is measured, in part, based on the state’s success in
establishing paternity for children born out of wedlock. See 42
U.S.C. §§ 652(g) and 658; 45 C.F.R. §§ 305.2 and 305.40. It is unclear how OCSE will apply this
requirement if the bill is enacted, particularly if multiple or unrelated
individuals are presumed to be parents under the bill. Finally, the bill may impact the scope of
CSSD’s obligation to provide services to individuals seeking to establish or
enforce support obligations against domestic partners and the District’s
ability to obtain federal reimbursement for these services. For example, federal law authorizes the child
support agency to enforce certain spousal support orders, but it does not
appear that CSSD could use federal funds to enforce support obligations issued
on behalf of domestic partners. See 45 C.F.R. §§ 301.1 and 302.31.
3)
The bill would extend
the marital presumption of Section 16-909 to the persons in a registered
domestic partnership. While the
expansion of the marital presumption of biological parentage to domestic
partners of opposite genders is consistent with the policies underlying the
presumption itself, the bill would also apply the marital presumption to
registered domestic partnerships involving same sex couples. It is impossible to create a presumption of
biological parentage in a same sex registered domestic partnership, since at
least one of the domestic partners cannot be the biological parent. Further, it is not clear that every domestic
partner will want to be the presumed parent of a child to which there is no biological
attachment. Under the bill, such a
domestic partner would have to bring an action to disestablish parentage to
avoid this result.
4)
The bill’s impact
on the continuing validity of the District’s adoption laws should be
addressed. A statute that confers the
legal status of parent on an unrelated person is arguably inconsistent with the
requirements of Chapter 3 of Title 16 of the District of Columbia Official
Code, D.C. Official Code § 16-301 et seq.,
which, under most circumstances, requires an unrelated party to adopt the child
and the natural parent to consent to the child’s adoption before parental
rights are established. Although a
presumption of parentage created in favor of additional unrelated individuals
is unlike an adoption in that it does not appear to terminate the biological
parent’s parental rights, it does burden the natural parent’s liberty interest
in the parental relationship in a manner that might raise constitutional
concerns. Based on Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000)[3],
it can be argued that by assigning parental status to individuals who are not
related to the child, the bill unconstitutionally interferes with the parental
rights of biological parents. If the
bill has the effect of giving children two additional parents, all four parents
would apparently have equal rights to the child’s care, custody and control,
thus forcing, for example, a biological father with custody to negotiate with
the mother’s domestic partner over decisions concerning the child’s
upbringing. Troxel suggests that there are limits on how far a legislature may
go in authorizing individuals other than natural parents to interfere with
parental decision-making. It is not
clear that the Council can avoid this constitutional objection by simply
designating the other parties as parents.
In Stanley v. Illinois, 405
5)
The bill would
amend section 6 of the Vital Records Act to require that the name of a domestic
partner of the mother be included on a child’s birth certificate as a parent of
the child if the mother was in a domestic partnership at the time of the
child’s conception or birth. The bill’s
amendments to the Vital Records Act may result in the designation of multiple,
potentially unrelated persons as parents on officially issued birth
certificates. These designations could
create confusion when others attempt to rely on these documents to determine
these individuals’ biological relationship with the child. Further, it is not clear how a domestic
partner who is not the biological parent of a child would have his or her name
removed from the child’s birth certificate upon the termination of the domestic
partnership – the bill makes no provision for this contingency.[4]
6)
The historical
and current purpose of a birth certificate is twofold: 1) to obtain demographic
information on the health and survival rates of infants based on information on
the biological parents, such as their education and race or ethnicity, the
facts related to the mother’s prior pregnancies, risk factors the mother and
fetus may have been exposed to, and health information about the mother’s
current pregnancy; and 2) to determine who would be legally responsible for the
care and protection of the child with responsibility falling, initially, on the
perceived biological parents.
Responsibility for the child could become that of the state, however,
when a parent or parents died, the state determined that parental rights should
be terminated in the best interests of the child, or the parents gave the child
to the state for adoption. The facts of
parentage would remain unchanged on the legal record unless another person or
persons agreed to accept the legal responsibility through adoption. Even after adoption and the issuance of a new
birth certificate, the original certificate is retained[5]. Ultimately, the purpose of a birth
certificate is to identify to the world who a child’s biological parents are
and who, therefore, is responsible for the care of the child. Only when the biological parents are unable
or unwilling to be responsible for a child is the identification of a parent
changed and only if another person agrees to fill that role. Presently, a birth certificate requires no
information about a parent on a birth certificate, only information about a
mother and, if known, a father. There is
not, in fact, a legal definition in the statute for the terms “mother” and
“father”, so the Department of Health, Vital Records Division relies on the
commonly understood meanings of those terms.
The term “parent” was not previously used in the statute and would only
appear in the proposed amendments. The bill
would require changes to the birth certificate form to accommodate addition of
domestic partner as a parent and would change the purpose of the certificate
from a form intended to record biological information to one that records
something other than biological information.
7)
The bill requires
the use of gender specific terms used elsewhere in the D.C. Official Code to
refer to persons of any gender when necessary to implement the rights and
obligations established by Title 16.
This change could have implications for Acknowledgement of Paternity
forms (AOP) because the change could require the listing of a female as a
father or male person who is not a biological father on the AOP. Voluntary acknowledgment of paternity is done
pursuant to federal law and is intended to identify fathers who are not married
to the child’s mother, either on an original birth certificate or an amended
birth certificate after the filing of an AOP.
The purpose of the AOP is to encourage fathers to acknowledge paternal
responsibilities and minimize the support that the government provides. As a global change, the bill could also have
a significant impact on the process for registering births. The current birth certificate form records
information about mothers and putative fathers, not husbands and wives. The bill’s proposed changes could result in
the elimination of those gender specific terms, mother and father, and
replacement with either different non-gender specific terms unrelated to the
biological relationship of the person to the child.
8)
Although the bill does not directly address how expanding the parental
rights of domestic partners will affect domestic partners’ inheritance rights
to or from these children, the bill
amends D.C. Official Code § 16-907 to include references to children
born during a domestic partnership in the definitions of children born in and
out of wedlock. This amendment is
significant with respect to inheritance because D.C. Official Code § 19-316
allows children born out of wedlock to inherit by intestate succession from
their mothers and fathers, and other relatives, if parenthood has been
established, and the bill would treat children of domestic partners as having
been born in wedlock. Although the terms
“mother” and “father”, as used in this section, could be construed as limiting
inheritance rights to children of
biological parents,[6] the
amendment arguably permits children to inherit from unrelated domestic
partners, and their relatives, even after the domestic partnership has
terminated. Such a broad expansion of
intestate inheritance rights appears to be unusual, if not unprecedented, and
would likely inspire litigation.[7]
OAG looks forward to working
collaboratively with your office to ensure that the enacted laws best serve the
interests of the residents of the
Very truly yours,
Tonya A. Sapp
Director of Legislative
Affairs
[1] Compliance with federal State Plan requirements is a condition for the receipt of federal funding for the child support program. 42 U.S.C. 652(a)(3); 45 C.F.R. § 301.15. In addition, non-compliance with these requirements can cause a state to lose federal public assistance funding under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program. See 42 U.S.C. § 609(a)(8).
[2] Although OCSE has waived the requirement of enactment of the 1996 version of UIFSA for some states, it has done so to authorize its replacement with the enhanced 2001 version approved by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. UIFSA 2001 is consistent with UIFSA 1996 and will likely replace UIFSA 1996 as the version subject to the federal mandate. It includes several enhancements, most notably in the area of international support enforcement. Waivers have not been issued, to our knowledge, to permit individual states to vary the scope and applicability of UIFSA’s basic substantive provisions.
[3] In Troxel, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld
the invalidation of a
[4] The bill also does not indicate whether, upon termination of a domestic partnership, an unrelated domestic partner who no longer wants to be considered a parent under the presumption of parentage created by the amendments to D.C. Official Code §16-909 must bring a legal action to achieve that result.
[5] D.C. Official Code § 7-210(e). Subsection (g) of this section provides that the original is kept under seal.
[6] The bill does not amend Title 19 of the District of Columbia Official Code to require gender-specific terms for parents to be construed to apply to persons of any gender.
[7] One can easily imagine a scenario under which, for example, the siblings of a decedent might challenge the rights of a child unrelated to the decedent to inherit based on the decedent’s brief domestic partnership with the child’s natural parent.