Kathryn Kutil and Cheryl Hess of Fayetteville were given custody of the child shortly after her birth.
The child’s birth parents gave up all rights to their daughter, and Kutil and Hess expressed interest in her adoption.
But a court-appointed guardian demanded that the child be removed and relocated to a more “traditional home.”
The quality of care the child was were receiving was never at issue.
Instead, the child’s Guardian Ad Litem believed “that the best interest of the child is not to be raised, short term or long term, in a homosexual environment and that the same is detrimental to the child's overall welfare and well-being.”
Fayette Circuit Judge Paul Blake agreed, and ruled the child should be removed from Hess and Kutil’s home within two weeks.
The Supreme Court’s opinion overturns Blake's ruling.
In a unanimous decision, the Court determined that staying with the women was in the best interest of the child.
"All indications thus far are that (the child) has formed a close emotional bond and nurturing relationship with her foster parents, which can not be trivialized or ignored," the ruling states.
Stephen Skinner, president of the group Fairness West Virginia, said the court did the right thing for the child.
“One of the most important things to understand about this is that the parents of this child—they didn’t want her,” he said.
“They gave her up. And these two women took her in as foster parents. And one of the women is going to try to adopt her. This is the only family that she’s ever known and the Guardian Ad Litem wanted to snatch her out of there, without, as the Supreme Court said, any good reason.”
Jeremy Dys, president of the group Family Policy Council of West Virginia, says the ruling was in error.
“We think that the law is plainly clear right now. We disagree that there was ambiguity, and that’s what the Supreme Court found,” Dys said.
Dys says the Legislature should change the law to make sure gay couples cannot adopt or be foster parents.
“If our Supreme Court has seen some ambiguity, then the Legislature should respond by creating an even more clear directive that two cohabitating individuals cannot be adoptive parents.
“The law prefers a married mom and dad to be the parents of adoptive and foster children,” Dys said.
Department of Health and Human Resources spokesman John Law says the decision shows that DHHR made a good choice in placing the child with her foster parents.
“Well I think that this proves again that at DHHR we always look for what is best for the child,” he said. “And I think the court realizes that we did that, and we want to protect the safety of the child and to make sure the child is in a loving environment.”
Frank Crabtree is the director of the West Virginia ACLU. He says this decision will have widespread meaning.
“It means that a unanimous court has affirmed that more than one type of loving family can adopt a child in West Virginia,” he said, “and certainly the record bears out the court’s decision on that.”
Under West Virginia law only married couples or single people can adopt. The women’s attorney says one of the women plans to petition for adoption.