MD Custody Restriction Appealed

June 16, 2005

ANNAPOLIS, MD — Maryland's highest court will hear an appeal from a gay father ordered to stop living with his partner while raising his 12-year-old son.

The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling this week and agreed to consider the case that has outraged gay activists.

Ulf Hedberg has been fighting to keep his family together.

A legal brief filed by Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights argues that the ruling is unconstitutional. The brief argues that the lower court ruling violates the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision on privacy.

Hedberg and his ex-wife, residents of Virginia at the time, separated when their son was four years old. For the next five-and-a-half years, the child lived with Hedberg and his partner, Blaise Delahoussaye, in a suburban Virginia home the couple purchased together.

The home had a back yard and was near a good school, Hedberg says. Together, the two men provided a stable loving home, he said.

After the boy's mother moved to Florida, she petitioned for custody. A Virginia court issued an order giving Hedberg physical custody of the boy but requiring Delahoussaye to move out of the family's home.

The Virginia court based its decision on that state's sodomy law, which was struck down, along with 12 others nationwide, in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2003.

In order to maintain two separate residences, the couple sold their house and moved into smaller apartments in Maryland. Though Delahoussaye visits his family as much as he can, the restriction keeps them all from living in the same home together.

This decision is an important step on the road to reuniting this family, said Susan Sommer, Senior Counsel at Lambda Legal.

Our client can now show the trial court how the restriction requiring his long-time partner to live outside the home the family shared for many years makes no sense and only hurts his twelve year old son, said Sommer, who represented the father in oral argument before the appeals court earlier this year.

He lost his home, his school, his park and most importantly the proximity of the caring adult who has helped raise him. No one wins with this arrangement, and it's imperative that the court step in and put the child's interests first.