Three estranged lesbian couples presented their cases to the California Supreme Court in San Francisco yesterday, seeking legal clarification [via The Legal Reader] on their rights as parents. Two women are seeking custody and one woman is seeking child support from their former partners.

Justice Ming W. Chin brought up how legal statutes which refer to 'mother and father' might need to be rewritten, and Justice Janice Rogers Brown, who is one of George Bush's controversial federal judicial nominations being debated in the senate, wondered if the cases "open up a lot of possibilities for intrusion on parental roles by relative strangers?"

The new California domestic partnership registry grants many of the parental rights heterosexual couples have enjoyed to registered couples who have children, and legal adoption has been a method of ensuring that both parents in a same-sex couple have guardianship status over children. But the decision in this case could be an indicator of how justices will fall on the issue of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples.