Boone County hosts special appeals court session

The Western Appellate District normally holds court in Kansas City.

By Andrew Denney

Published Nov. 14, 2008

The public was invited to the Boone County Circuit Courthouse to watch how Missouri's appellate court system works in Columbia on Wednesday, when the court heard a case that could set a legal precedent in Missouri.

The judges, who preside over Missouri's Western Appellate District, which includes Boone County, heard five cases, one of which is a custody battle between two women who were involved in a same-sex relationship that involved two children.

According to court documents, the women both mothered children that were conceived by anonymous donors. The women and the children lived together and the women separated in November 2005.

Columbia attorney Melissa Farout said the women, Elizabeth M. Crowe, her client and the respondent in the case, and Leslea D. White, the appellant, had an arrangement in which the partners spent time with both children until May 2006. Farout said the women then ceased that arrangement and in January 2007 White filed for joint custody of the two children.

According to court documents, Crowe moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that White had no reason that would entitle her to seek custody.

White's attorneys filed an appeal on 10 different counts, including that the circuit court that first heard the case had failed not only to apply principles to safeguard the best interests of the children, but also to recognize each woman as a de facto parent of the other's child and provide the women with the equal protections of opposite-sex couples.

Under the Uniform Parentage Act of 2002, a legal mother is defined as a woman who either carried the child until birth or was granted legal custody of the child through adoption or through a legally binding agreement. Under this law, White cannot have custody of Crowe's child, nor could Crowe have custody of White's.

Susan Sommer, senior counsel for Lambda Legal, argued the case on Wednesday on behalf of White. She said during the arguments that applying the canons of this law to this case is "an interpretation that would leave these children out in the cold."

Farout argued that a ruling in favor of the appellants would "open the floodgates" to a number of litigants seeking to establish parental custody outside the definitions of the current law.

"A third party does not have a right to raise someone else's child," Farout said.

Farout said that this case is a first for Missouri.

Anthony Rothert, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney for Eastern Missouri, said he thinks the case is destined for the state Supreme Court. He said the ACLU supports de facto parenthood in custody cases.

"Once you have a family, one person should not be able to unilaterally end that family," Rothert said.

The ACLU is a "friend of the court" in the case, which means he is not directly involved in the case, but is interested in the outcome because of its possible legal ramifications.

Currently, 18 states recognize de facto parenthood.

The judges, Victor Callahan, Joseph Ellis and Alok Ajuha, as well as eight other judges for the district, usually hear cases in Kansas City, but commonly hold court in courthouses and law schools throughout the district.

Callahan said the justices would return to Columbia in April at the MU School of Law.