Adoption

Ordinarily, all information concerning an adopted child's origins is sealed, in compliance with the court adoption proceedings, to facilitate development of a relationship between the adoptive parents and child free from the natural parents' influence.

Most state statutes deny adoptees access to records that disclose information about the natural parents. Often, the natural parents make their consent to the adoption contingent upon the condition that no information about them should ever be revealed.

In recent times, because of a growing public interest in tracing ethnic and family backgrounds, many adoptees, as adults, have been calling for the right to obtain access to sealed adoption records.

The adult adoptees recognize that a disclosure of this kind of information could be traumatic to minor adoptees, but they contend that lack of access could cause serious psychological trauma to them as adults. In addition, they cite medical problems or misdiagnoses that could be caused by absence of genetic history, lack of religious identity, and fear of unwitting INCEST.

Adult adoptees contend that most adoption statutes do not make a distinction between adoptees as minors and later as adults, which causes the adults to be deprived of the right to trace their background. In addition, the adults allege that they have been denied EQUAL PROTECTION of law because their status precludes them from receiving medical information readily available to nonadoptees.

Various approaches are being used to resolve this problem. One approach involves the enactment of a legislative requirement that public and private adoption agencies be required to open their records upon request to adults who were adopted as children, with certain limitations. For example, if the child had been placed by the natural parents prior to the effective date of the legislation, the natural parents could prevent the adoptee from seeing the records.

The issue of right to access to adoption records by adoptees when they reach adulthood also encompasses the legal consideration of the natural parents' right to privacy, which could be violated if free access to sealed court records were given to adult adoptees. The adult adoptees' right to know must be balanced against their natural parents' right to privacy. The way to achieve such a balance, however, has never been clearly determined.

In September, 1999, Tennessee's Supreme Court overturned the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruling in Doe v. Sundquist, 2 S.W.3d 919 (Tenn., Sep 27, 1999) (NO. 01-S-01-9901-CV00006), which challenged a law passed in 1995 that unsealed both adoption records and original birth certificates to adult adoptees. Earlier, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in favor of the state and opined, much to the dismay of sealed records advocates: "A birth is simultaneously an intimate occasion and a public event—the government has long kept records of when, where, and by whom babies are born. Such records have myriad purposes, such as furthering the interest of children in knowing the circumstances of their birth," Doe v. Sundquist, 106 F.3d 702, 65 USLW 2527, 1997 Fed.App. 0051P (6th Cir.(Tenn.) Feb 11, 1997) (NO. 96-6197). The U.S. Supreme Court, however, elected not to hear the Tennessee case.