Ne. High court takes on same sex custody rights

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110403/NEWS01/704039881#high-court-takes-on-custody-rights

Published Sunday April 3, 2011

By Paul Hammel
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN — The couple were together for 15 years when they decided to have a child.

Together they prepared a nursery and selected a name as they listened to the “thump-thump” of a heartbeat and played music for the wondrous boy growing in his mother's womb.

After the child's birth, they shared the responsibilities of parenthood — feeding, bathing and clothing the baby and later helping with homework and attending parent-teacher conferences.

But the storybook family life ended in 2006, when the couple broke up. The split spawned a court fight over custody and visitation, with the conflicting claims about each parent's fitness and involvement that custody battles so often entail.

The legal dispute would be a lot less complicated if this couple were a traditional husband and wife.

But the mother of the child, Susan Schwerdtfeger, and her former partner, Teri Latham, are lesbians. Under Nebraska law they cannot marry, and, as the non-biological parent, Latham couldn't adopt the boy she helped raise.

FULL story at link.

[TheWraith]

1. Anyone know NE's equal protection laws?

In most states, there would be an equal protection argument to make, i.e. that Latham is being denied protection of the law that she could have had if she were a man. But I don't know what level of EP guarantees that Nebraska has under it's constitution.