More than three years after an Internet adoption site refused to allow a gay couple to post their profile, a federal judge allowed the pair’s discrimination lawsuit to go to trial.U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton rejected arguments that Adoption.com had free speech rights to exclude same-sex couples from its paid listings, which are designed to match birth mothers with qualified parents.
“Plaintiffs are not seeking to place any restrictions on what defendants are permitted to say or to compel them to say anything,” Hamilton wrote in an 81-page ruling issued March 30. “It is the discriminatory conduct that is at issue here—defendants’ refusal to do business with the plaintiffs.”
In allowing the lawsuit to go to trial in June, Hamilton also dismissed the company’s claim that California anti-bias policies did not apply because Adoption.com is based in Tempe, Ariz., where state laws don’t bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or marital status.
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