West Virginia SB470: You’re Redacted!

Just when you think it can’t get any dumber: Meet West Virginia!

Now, I know a lot of people make fun of West Virgina, most of whom have never been there. My birth dad and his family are from West Virginia, and I can assure you that the state is full of smart people. They’re just not in the legislature, which in a very short time has proudly gone from Dumb to Dumber to Dumbest.

Here is a brief review of what are considered “adoptee rights bills” introduced over the last few years. I’m lifting this from a blog I posted recently on Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now regarding the legislature’s whiz-bang attempt to rush through HB3559, a Safe Haven Baby Box bill  –so rushed that they forgot to do a public hearing. There can never be enough anonymous births in West Virginia.

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  2019-2023: Authorizes release of OBCs to West Virginia-born adoptees 18 years of age and older and their lineal descendants. Adoptees must have graduated from high school, completed the GED, or have legally withdrawn from school. Includes Contact Preference Form that does not affect the release of OBC, but also includes a redaction request form to allow parent(s) to request name be redacted from released OBC.

• 2022: Requires adoptees 21 years of age and older to first apply unsuccessfully to obtain their identifying information from the state’s mutual consent registry before they can apply for their OBCs. Contains petition process, “good cause” determination, and confusing language.
• 2021: Requires adoptees to use of state’s Mutual Consent Registry which also requires 1 hour of counseling before OBCs can be requested. If the adoptee isn’t successful in obtaining identifying information through the registry, the clerk of courts is required to provide the OBC, but the document is actually held by the WV Department of Health unless it is already managed by the registry. Does not apply to West Virginia-born adoptees who were adopted in another state.
• 2017: Permits access to the “adoption file.“It contains a Contact Preference Form and a Disclosure Veto. When an adoptee or lineal descendant requests a copy of the file, the state will place the birthparent(s) “on notice” to inform them of their “responsibilities and options ” before the file is released. The bill does not include what these procedures are or what happens if there is no birthparent response.

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These bills have gone nowhere, and it has been impossible to take them seriously. A high school diploma or a GED to get your OBC? Sounds like joining the army.

But a couple of days ago, the unthinkable happened.  SB470, the latest OBC travesty, started to move, and yesterday  (March 1, 2023) the West Virginia Senate Judiciary Committee rendered this already silly bill useless, abhorrent, and adopteephobic with an amendment that makes the OBCs of all West Virginia-born adoptees redacted by default. You’ll get your OBC, but most of it will be blacked out. (You got what you wanted. What are you complaining about?) The only way around this is if a birthparent files a “contact preference form” that acts as a disclosure veto and a “personal identifying information form” giving consent for the release of the real OBC or at least the parts of it that they are OK with. (There’s a checklist!)  This absurd requirement not only creates an “active veto,” but also a “passive veto” since dead people and people who aren’t unaware of the requirement won’t file. To add insult to injury, this fake veto is a Zombie Veto that lives on after death!

How did somebody come up with utter bullshit? And why now when states are restoring full OBC rights at a record pace? No state, to the best of my knowledge, has ever redacted all OBCs to default status. Redactions have always been judged case-by-case.

There is nothing in the amended bill to explain what happens if two parents are on the OBC and one agrees to release and the other denies release or remains silent.  I assume that the one who doesn’t approve release gets redacted. I only ask this because years ago in one of the Dakotas, a bill proposed that a birthparent be fined $100,000 if they revealed to the adoptee, without the consent of the other birthparent,  the name of that birthparent.

Committee meetings are streamed but neither hearing shows up in the Senate or House archives. If they are posted  later I will add them here. Since SB470 was rushed as fast as HB3559, I’m assuming that the OBC bill had no public hearing either.

On a final note, somebody in the West Virginia legislature has ants in their pants about anonymous birth and adoption. SB470 and the  Baby Box bill were introduced on the same day–February 25.  The Baby Box bill passed the House and is now in the Senate Judiciary Committee. SB 470 is waiting for a floor vote in the Senate and transmittal to the House.  All in 6 days–without public hearings!

The 2023 session of the legislature closes on March 11,