Italy's constitutional court won't hear gay adoption case

ROME (AP) — Italy's constitutional court refused Wednesday to hear a same-sex adoption case involving two American mothers, putting aside the question amid intense debate in Italy over legal recognition of civil unions and gay adoption.

The court decided that the case presented by the tribunal for minors in Bologna was inadmissible.

Nora Beck, an Italian-American musicologist at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, her American wife and their two children moved to Italy in 2013 for a sabbatical year.

Beck, whose late mother was Italian and who spent summers and some academic years in the country as a child, had tried to pass her Italian citizenship onto the rest of her family, but could only extend it to her 11-year-old biological son. Beck's wife, Liz Joffe, gave birth to their 12-year-old daughter.

The women went to court in Bologna after realizing they had no legal rights over their non-biological children, even though each had adopted the other's biological child in the U.S. If Joffe died, for example, Beck would have had no custody rights over their daughter in Italy.

Italy, an overwhelmingly Catholic country where the Vatican wields influence, was condemned last year by the European Court for Human Rights for being the only country in Western Europe that doesn't recognize gay marriage or civil unions. The Senate is poised this week to approve civil unions after Premier Matteo Renzi bowed to fierce opposition and agreed to drop a proposed measure that would have allowed gays to adopt the biological children of their partners.

Amid such an uncertain legal landscape, the Bologna tribunal kicked the case to Italy's highest court, which ruled Wednesday that the lower court had erred in treating the issue as a question of an adoption by Italians of a foreign child. The constitutional court said the case instead concerned Italian recognition of a foreign court's ruling involving foreigners: the adoptions that were approved years ago by Oregon courts.

As a result of the tribunal's error, the constitutional court ruled its petition inadmissible and refused to hear it.

The timing of the case before the constitutional court was coincidental, but Beck was back in Rome on Wednesday with her daughter while the justices were deliberating behind closed doors.

After moving back to Portland after the sabbatical, the family has continued to spend vacations with Beck's family in Gressoney-La-Trinite in northwest Italy. And Beck said she was hopeful that the Bologna court would eventually recognize the adoptions and grant her daughter the same benefits of Italian citizenship that her biological son enjoys.

"My mother wanted this for my children," Beck said in perfect Italian after the decision came out. "Their 'nonna' wanted my children to be Italian."

By Nicole Winfield. Copyright 2016 The Associated Press

The Gayly- 2/24/2016 @ 10:54 AM CST