In 2007, Frank Martin Gill, an openly gay man, had petitioned the circuit court to adopt two boys that he and his partner had been raising as foster children since 2004.
[1] After a four-day trial challenging the law, on November 25, 2008, Judge Cindy S. Lederman declared the ban violated the equal protection rights of the children and their prospective parents under the Florida Constitution, and granted Gill's adoption request.
In May 2002, while the Lofton case was pending, eight former state legislators who voted for the 1977 ban, including the former Senate President and House Speaker, repudiated the law.
"[13] Furthermore, in June 2003 the U. S. Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas struck down all remaining sodomy laws nationwide as being unconstitutional violations of the due process rights of gays and lesbians.
However, in January 2004, the appeals court ruled against Lofton, finding that the adoption ban did not violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.
In 1994, the Florida Second District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, holding that the legislature had not prohibited homosexuals or unmarried couples from serving as foster parents.
[10] With the help of attorneys provided by the American Civil Liberties Union, Gill filed a petition for adoption with the circuit court in January 2007, which held a four-day hearing on the case in October 2008.
[1] The boys' guardian ad litem, appointed by the court to represent their interests in the proceedings, called Gill and his partner "model parents" and their home "one of the most caring and nurturing placements" he had seen.
[20] The ACLU, representing Gill, called expert witnesses who cited studies that found no significant differences in the stability of same-sex relationships compared to opposite-sex relationships, and no significant differences in outcomes for children raised by same-sex parents versus opposite-sex parents.
[10] The state called Dr. George Alan Rekers, at the time an officer and scientific advisor of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), who presented research (some of which had already been discredited) finding that gay men and lesbians suffered higher rates of depression, anxiety, affective disorders and substance abuse than heterosexuals and that same-sex relationships were less stable than opposite-sex ones.
"[23] In her order granting the petition to adopt, Judge Lederman (who had presided over many child welfare cases as Presiding Judge of the Miami-Dade Juvenile Court since 1994)[24] found that Florida's adoption ban violated the equal protection rights of Gill and the minor children without a rational basis for doing so.
As a result, based on the robust nature of the evidence available in the field, this Court is satisfied that the issue is so far beyond dispute that it would be irrational to hold otherwise; the best interests of children are not preserved by prohibiting homosexual adoption.
[2][25] In December 2008, lawyers for Gill and the children filed a motion requesting that the Florida Supreme Court take up the case immediately, which was denied.
[27] In the appeals court, state attorneys working for McCollum redoubled their efforts to maintain the ban on gay adoptions, and furthermore sought to remove the children from the Gill home, where they had resided happily for five years and, as the circuit judge found, "thrived."
In November 2009, the Palm Beach Post reported:[28] Deputy Solicitor General Tim Osterhaus, who works for McCollum and made the oral argument on Aug. 26, was asked by Judge Vance Salter what relief the agency was seeking from the court.
"There was an audible gasp in the packed courtroom when the attorney general's lawyer said that," said ACLU Florida spokesman Brandon Hensler, one of the dozens of attendees during oral arguments before the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Miami in August.
[31] On September 22, 2010, the court unanimously struck down the ban as violating the equal protection guarantees of the Florida Constitution, stating: "The trial judge was entitled to reach the conclusion, which she did, that the Department's experts' opinions were not valid from a scientific point of view.
[34] Before the appeals court's final decision was rendered in September 2010, In re: Gill had gained further notability as the background to both the failed political ambitions of Attorney General Bill McCollum and the career-ending scandal of Dr. George Rekers.
The Miami Herald reported on June 5, 2010:[37] Disgraced psychologist George Rekers was labeled a "right-wing, religious-based" expert witness and rejected for months by state attorneys defending Florida's gay adoption ban.
The payments included $9,000 for 30 hours of searching journal articles and books, $27,000 to "read the relevant publications since Sept. 2004 and evaluate and critique the methodological quality."
Rekers was paid to meet with the attorney general's staff to prepare for depositions and to be deposed by lawyers for the adoptive parents.