Lawyers from New York-based Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison scored another gay rights victory by mounting a successful challenge to the nation’s last remaining ban on same-sex adoption. They persuaded U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan III to rule in a March 31 decision that Mississippi’s prohibition on gay adoption violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The Paul Weiss team was led by litigation partner Roberta Kaplan, who successfully argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. Kaplan got involved in the adoption case that same year, when she delivered a talk in Ashville, North Carolina, and met several members of the Campaign for Southern Equality, a LGBT rights advocacy organization that became one of the five plaintiffs in the adoption case.
