A bill that would allow married gay couples in Arkansas to list both spouses' names on their children's birth certificates without a court order has failed to advance out of a Senate committee.
Democratic Sen. Joyce Elliott's bill failed to advance Monday from the Senate Judiciary Committee due to a lack of a second motion. The proposed measure would have changed the presumption of parentage under the state's artificial insemination and surrogacy laws.
The measure was filed in response to a state Supreme Court ruling last year reversing a judge's decision to strike down Arkansas' birth certificate law as unconstitutional.
Attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that decision on the grounds that it undermines the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.