Arkansas Supreme Court rules that same-sex parents' names cannot appear on babies' birth certificates

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled late last week that birth certificates for children of same-sex couples will not be allowed to list the names of both parents.

According to Reuters, the ruling puts an end to the fairly brief amount of time that same-sex couples were allowed the same parental rights as the children of heterosexual couples.

"For a relatively brief moment in 2015 and 2016, same-sex parents in Arkansas were allowed to list their names on their children's birth certificates—a decision that came after three lesbian couples sued the state's health department in summer 2015," wrote Glamour magazine's Erin Reimal.

On Thursday, the state Supreme Court ruled that even if a child is legally adopted by same-sex parents, their birth certificate will bear the names of the child's biological parents, which the conservative court majority called "basic biological truth."

"In the situation involving the female spouse of a biological mother, the female spouse does not have the same biological nexus to the child that the biological mother or the biological father has," wrote Supreme Court Associate Judge Jo Hart in the ruling.

Arkansas Associate Justice Paul Danielson wrote in his dissent that the court's ruling on this matter is "simply and demonstrably wrong" and stands athwart federal law, which says a child's parents must be listed on their birth certificate, even if they are not biologically related as per the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling 2015 ruling on same-sex marriage.