Court to Hear Challenge to Florida’s ‘Scarlet Letter Law’

Florida’s 4th District Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments today challenging the constitutionality of a state law requiring some women to advertise their sexual history in newspapers before placing children up for adoption.

Dubbed the “Scarlet Letter Law” by critics, the 2001 law applies to women who do not know who fathered the children they want to put up for adoption.

The law requires them to try to find the father by running newspaper ads in cities where conception might have occurred, listing their names and descriptions, the children’s names, the names and descriptions of men they had sex with and the dates they had sex.

In an unusual move, the state attorney general’s office notified the appeals court on Dec. 30 that it would neither file briefs nor make any defense of the law.

The decision was made before Atty. Gen. Charles Crist took office, his spokeswoman said, and the assistant attorney general who handled the case was away on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

“It speaks loudly, though, that the attorney general’s office doesn’t believe this statute is worth defending,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Charlotte Danciu.

Danciu, a family law attorney who has handled more than 2,000 adoptions, will argue at the hearing that the statute violates privacy provisions of the Florida and U.S. constitutions.

“Traditionally, your right to have privacy in your bedroom and your right to keep your sexual history private is an absolute right,” Danciu said.

“One can scarcely conceive a more egregious intrusion than such forced disclosure of one’s sexual relations in the mass media,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the law.

The law was passed to protect men’s parental rights and to assure adoptive parents the adoption would not be challenged by men who belatedly learned they fathered children.

The appeals court has already ruled that the law cannot be applied to women who got pregnant when raped.

The four plaintiffs in today’s appeal include a girl who had sex with several classmates and conceived at age 13, and two “substance abusers” who had sex with dealers and other users, Danciu said. The fourth, a former foster child struggling to take care of herself, “has no idea who the father is of seven men that she slept with,” Danciu said.

Adoption proponents say the law defeats the aim of persuading women to give up unwanted children for adoption rather than undergo abortion or abandon the children.

Dozens of the ads have appeared in Florida newspapers. Danciu estimates 30 of her clients have had abortions rather than advertise their histories.

“One told me she would have killed herself” if she had to run such an ad, Danciu said.

The ad requirement was a small part of a broad 106-page adoption bill and drew little notice when it zipped through the state Legislature in 2001.

Democratic state Sen. Walter “Skip” Campbell was one of the chief sponsors of the bill. He didn’t write it but “took all the heat” when the ads attracted national ridicule and is sponsoring a revised version that “does away with that silly provision,” he said.

It would create a confidential paternity registry allowing men who might have fathered children to record their interest in preserving their parental rights. If a woman they named as a sex partner put up a child for adoption, they would be notified and given a limited time to contest the adoption.

Modeled after laws in New York, Minnesota and Texas, it has strong support from adoption lawyers, child advocates, religious groups and other interested parties consulted by Florida legislators. Lawmakers expect it to pass easily when the Legislature convenes in March.