Court refuses
child visitation dispute

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to get involved in a dispute between two lesbian former lovers over visitation rights involving a 4-year-old child.

The child's biological mother, Lisa Miller, had asked the justices to take the case because Vermont courts have ordered Miller to allow her former partner, Janet Jenkins, to see the child, Isabella, one week a month.

In 2000 the two women entered into a civil union in Vermont, and they decided Lisa would use artificial insemination with an anonymous donor to have a child.

Isabella was born in Virginia in 2002, and the two women moved to Vermont, where they lived for a year before separating.

Miller renounced her homosexuality, returned to Virginia, and denied Jenkins's demands for visitation rights.

Relying heavily on the rulings by Vermont courts, the Virginia court of appeals said Miller is required to comply with visitation orders of the Vermont courts under the federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act.

Miller says the act conflicts with a more recent federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, on same-sex marriage. That act says no state shall be required to abide by a law of any other state with respect to a same-sex marriage.

In asking the justices to take the case, Miller's lawyers said state courts in Vermont and elsewhere have ''eviscerated the protections afforded each state'' under the Defense of Marriage Act.

Jenkins's lawyers said Vermont courts were the first to take jurisdiction of the case and that Miller's response was to ''run to a Virginia court'' seeking a result more to her liking. (AP)