Attorneys for Ruby and Ashlee Henderson filed the Lafayette couple's lawsuit Friday morning against Tippecanoe County and state health officials, contending that they should be allowed to have both of their names listed as parents on their son's birth certificate.
The defendants in the case, filed in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Indiana, include officials at the Tippecanoe County Health Department and Dr. Jerome M. Adams, the Indiana state health commissioner.
When Ashlee and Ruby Henderson's son was born on Dec. 22, they had the start of the family they'd been planning and hoping for since they'd met six years ago.
"Our miracle baby," Ashlee said.
With a change in Indiana's marriage laws, the two Lafayette women were able to get married in November — "making it feel even more real as a family," Ashlee said. But when the Hendersons asked to have both of their names listed as parents on their son's birth certificate, the Tippecanoe County Health Department declined.
"Not without a court order, they told us, even though we were legally married," Ashlee said. "If that's what it takes, I guess."
The Hendersons are challenging the state law on birth records and asking that Ashlee's name be added to the birth certificate so she can be recognized as her son's mother, without having to go through the adoption process.
Even as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to take on four cases dealing with same-sex marriage, this would be the latest fallout from the end of Indiana's gay marriage ban in 2014. The Hendersons are looking to sand down one of the rough edges of state law and vital records still built to accommodate a traditional, one-man/one-woman marriage.