Mexico's highest court on Tuesday
struck down a law in the state of Campeche that prohibits gay and
lesbian couples from adopting children.
In a 9-1 ruling, Mexico's Supreme Court
said that the ban was unconstitutional.
Campeche's law said that only married
couples could adopt children, but the state prohibits gay couples
from marrying and does not recognize their out-of-state marriages.
“What we have here really is
discrimination between heterosexual couples and same-sex couples,
because although there is no definition of marriage itself, and
although it is said that this new society can be shaped by people of
the same sex and different sex, the truth is that if we look at the
system carefully, marriage is forbidden for people of the same sex,
and the only possibility for same-sex couples is coexisting in civil
society,” Minister Arturo Zaldivar Lelo de Larrea wrote
in the decision.
In June, the high court effectively
legalized marriage equality throughout Mexico.
(Related: Mexico
Supreme court strikes down marriage bans; Chihuahua joins equality
states.)