California SB381: Letter of Support

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
PO Box 4607
New Windsor, New York 12553-7845
614-795-6819
bastards.org bastardnation3@gmail.com bastardnation@bsky.social

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TO: California Senate Health Committee, California Senate Judiciary Committee

FROM: Marley Greiner, Executive Chair

RE: SB381: Letter/Testimony of Support

DATE: January 6, 2026

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support only full unrestricted access for all adopted persons to their original birth certificates (OBC) and related documents.

For 30 years BN has worked in California to secure full access to OBCs for all California-born adoptees. In 2002 and 2009 I appeared in person at hearings and committee meetings.

Bastard Nation supports, as written, SB381–a “clean bill” with no restrictions on OBC access by California- -born adoptees 18 years of age and older. We will not support amendments that restrict access.

Current Law v SB 381: California OBCs were sealed in 1936 (91 years ago!), the same year that Franklin D. Roosevelt took his second term in office, Edward VIII abdicated the British crown to marry Mrs Simpson, and Himmler was appointed chief of the SS–and when adoption and adoptees were considered shameful—something to be hidden away.

This current law requires adoptees to secure a court order to obtain a copy of their OBCs for “good cause” though “good cause” is not defined by law. Those adopted after January 1, 1984 can access identifying birthparent information but only with the consent of birthparent(s). Both procedures are clumsy, time-consuming humiliating, and often unsuccessful,

Adoption Privacy Overview: “Privacy” “confidentiality,” and” anonymity” are not synonymous either legally or linguistically. Adoption “anonymity “is a myth perpetuated by special interests that for decades have profited off of economic distress and society-induced shame and family crisis. In many cases, adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary problem that has not only individual but generational consequences.

There is no evidence in any state that records were sealed to “protect” the reputation or “privacy” of biological parents who relinquished children for adoption. On the contrary, records were sealed to cover coercive child acquisition practices by adoption agencies, black and gray market baby traffickers, exploitative assembly-line maternity homes, and other corrupt systems. Numerous historical and legal researchers and writers have shown that OBCs were never intended to be sealed in perpetuity from individual adoptees as adults. At “best” sealed OBCs were billed as a way to protect the reputations of “bastard children” (not adults) and to protect adoptive families from birthparent and stranger “interference.”

Courts have ruled that adoption anonymity does not exist. (Doe v Sundquist, et. al., 943 F. Supp. 886, 893-94 (M.D. Tenn. 1996) and Does v. State of Oregon, 164 Or. App. 543, 993 P.2d 833, 834 (1999). Laws change constantly, and the state, lawyers, social workers, and others were never in a position to promise anonymity in adoption. In the over 70 years of the adoptee equality battle, not one document has been submitted anywhere that promises or guarantees sealed records and an anonymity “right” to birthparents.

Identifying information about surrendering parents often appears in court documents given to adoptive parents who can at any point give that information to the adopted person. (In some states, INCLUDING CALIFORNIA, adoptive parents, at the time of the adoption order, can petition the court to keep the record open.) The names of surrendering parents are published in legal ads. Courts can open “sealed records” for “good cause” without birthparent consent or even knowledge. Importantly, the OBC is sealed at the time of adoption finalization, not surrender. If a child is not adopted, the record is never sealed. If a child is adopted, but the adoption is overturned or disrupted, the OBC is unsealed. The OBCs of persons with established relationships with biological parents as in stepparent and foster adoptions are also sealed.

The American Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys, that for years supported sealed records agree with us that the time has come to dispose of past secret practice and policy and to unseal the OBCs of adopted people throughout the country. In 2018 it passed a monumental resolution in support of adoptees’ right of full access to our OBCs, court, and agency records.

Privacy and Technology: Today, inexpensive and accessible DNA testing services, and a large network of volunteer “search angels” that locate adoptee government-hidden information, histories, and biological families, have made the traditional “privacy” argument obsolete. Nearly all successful searches are done without the OBC and other court documents.

Conclusion: There is no state interest in keeping original birth certificates sealed from adult adoptees to whom they pertain nor does the state have a right or duty to mediate and oversee the personal relationships of adults. The debate on the release of OBCs to its adopted citizens is small v large government issue. Small government should win this one.

Adopted people in 16 states have unrestricted access to their OBCs, including all of New England and 3 deep South conservative states (Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia). Not a single negative report about unsealing has been published. OBC access, through the efforts of policy and lawmakers is being normalized. Adoptees are beginning to be treated just like the Not Adopted.

Passage of SB381 will cure decades-long discrimination and the abrogation of the civil rights of California-born adoptees. Please vote DO PASS on SB381 It’s the right thing to do. Thank you.

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Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adoptee’s historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult adoptee, without condition, and without qualification.