Finstuen v. Crutcher and Charles and April Land v. Yamaha Motor Corporation

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Case Briefs
Finstuen v. Crutcher
Issue
The issue in this case was in regard to children being raised in marriages between same couples. While some states have laws that recognize same sex marriages as well as the two parents as the legal parents of a child through legal adoptions, some states do not. The challenge arises when the two parents from a city that has such laws to that does not recognize such relationships. In this case, Heather Finstuen had adopted a child in New Jersey and received a birth certificate for the child recognizing her as the second parent to the child of Ann Magro (FindLaw, 2017). A similar adoption had happened in California, where another couple Lucy and Jennifer Doel had adopted a child while reserving the biological rights to the child. Nevertheless, While the couple sought to have them recognized by the State of Oklahoma as the parents, the Oklahoma State Department of Health “OSDH” declined to recognize them citing out of state adoption relationships. This led to Finstuen ad the other couples to sue Mike Crutcher as he was the Comissioner of Health for the State of Oklahoma terming the action as “unconstitutional”.
Holding
The District Court in its ruling held that, the amendment carried out by the State of Oklahoma indeed violated the constitution hence they deserved a remedy. By the above amendment, the State contravened the constitutional provision of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clause as well as the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The court ordered the Commissioner of Health to ...