BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A bill that would allow foreign-born applicants to obtain a Louisiana marriage license without producing a birth certificate has cleared its first legislative hurdle.
A House committee advanced the bill to amend Louisiana’s marriage law on Tuesday, several weeks after a federal judge blocked enforcement of the law’s birth certificate requirement.
A Lafayette man sued to challenge the law after it prevented him from marrying his fiancée last year. Viet Anh Vo has been a U.S. citizen since he was 8 years old but has no birth certificate because he was born in an Indonesian refugee camp after his parents fled Vietnam.
Rep. Valarie Hodges, a Republican, sponsored both the law that took effect last year and the new bill that would allow judges to waive the birth certificate requirement.
Hodges called it a “cleanup bill” to address a “few problems” with the marriage law but didn’t mention Vo’s federal lawsuit during Tuesday’s hearing by the House Committee on Civil Law and Procedures. The bill moves on to the full House for debate.
When he ruled in Vo’s favor on March 22, U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle said the birth certificate requirement violates the equal protection rights of foreign-born U.S. citizens, as well as the fundamental right to marry.
Lemelle’s ruling applies not just to Vo and his U.S.-born fiancee, Heather Pham, but also to “all individuals whose constitutional rights would be curtailed” by the law.
Vo and Pham spent thousands of dollars and invited 350 guests to their wedding last year before their application for a marriage license was rejected. They tried at three separate parishes, but were denied each time by court clerks.
Hodges has said her original legislation was meant to deter foreigners from gaining visas and citizenship through sham marriages.
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House Bill 270: www.legis.la.gov
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