The Georgia Court of Appeals has rejected the reactionary views of a family court judge who ruled that a foster parent could not adopt a child because her out-of-wedlock relationship with a man was “immoral.”

Judge David Roper

“The General Assembly has not prohibited unmarried couples from adopting children,” the court said in a stinging rebuke of Richmond County Superior Court Judge J. David Roper. “This court applies the law, not its personal viewpoint of social mores.”

Roper, who sits in Augusta, denied Theresa Goodeau's petition to adopt her foster daughter, ruling in a March 12 order that an adoption by an unmarried person living with someone else violates Georgia's “public policy,” which favors the institution of marriage. Goodeau and her partner, Mortimer Lovett, have been together for 20 years.

“It cannot be in a child's best interest to be placed in a household which the courts of this state have condemned as immoral," Roper pontificated.

But Judge Anne E. Barnes, writing for the appeals court, found Roper had “barely” considered the interests of the 3-year-old child identified only as A.C., who was placed in Goodeau's care two days after she was born in July 2007.

Both the court-appointed guardian ad litem and a Department of Family and Children's Services (DFACS) adoption specialist testified that an adoption by Goodeau was in A.C.'s best interest. “The issue for the court[ ] was simply to apply the law as written and determine whether it was in the child's best interest to allow the adoption,” Barnes said in her opinion. “This the court did not do.”

Goodeau, 66, and Lovett, 46, have been fostering children since 2001. After A.C.'s mother surrendered her parental rights, Goodeau filed the adoption petition in November 2009.

Georgia law states plainly that any adult over the age of 25, including a foster parent, “shall be eligible to apply to [DFACS] or a child-placing agency for consideration as an adoption applicant.” There is no requirement that the applicant be married.

But that apparently was too much for Roper to stomach. “Georgia recognizes the legitimacy of married couples and single individuals,” he said in his order. “It does not recognize any other status, regardless of the mores of some members of society who have thrown off long-standing social, moral, ethical and religious constraints.”

DFACS' policy of allowing people living in a “meretricious relationship” to serve as foster and adoptive parents, he continued, “offends the laws of this state, the sensibilities of this court, and the common conscious [sic] of the moral, ethical and religious citizens of this state.”

Roper directed DFACS to take A.C. from Goudeau's home and “place her with an appropriate custodian within fifteen days from the entry of this judgment” — even though the adoption specialist had testified that removing her from the only family she has ever known would be "devastating" to her.

Roper's order also included a three-page endnote in which he invited the legislature and appellate courts to address “how cohabitation and immoral conduct affect custody and visitation.”

Judge Barnes declined that invitation, preferring to chastise Roper for his judicial activism and disregard for A.C.'s best interests:

Contrary to the trial court's declaration of public policy, determining what laws are necessary and proper for the welfare of this State is a function constitutionally vested in the General Assembly, and not the judiciary.

During the hearing on Goodeau's petition, Roper, referring to her 20-year relationship with Lovett, opined, “the next week it's 15, and the next year it's 10, and before you know it, we're down to short-term meretricious relationships ... and there is no commitment,” with the child “being bounced around" with different adults coming into and leaving her life.

Roper, who was elected to the bench in 2006, is up for reelection this fall but, unfortunately, does not have a challenger.

By Matthew Heller
9/1/10