Judge Who Wrote Eloquently About Same-Sex Parents Found Dead in Hudson

Tragic news from New York City today. The New York Times reports that yesterday, after responding to an emergency call, officers with the New York Police Department’s Harbor Unit found the body of Judge Abdus-Salaam, the first black woman to serve on New York State’s highest court, in the Hudson River in Harlem with no apparent signs of trauma and no indications of foul play. Although the police are treating her death as a suicide, I can't imagine we have heard the last of this as she had been married just eight months ago. The Times notes that last summer, Judge Abdus-Salaam wrote an important decision, in the Matter of Brooke S.B. v. Elizabeth A.C.C., that expanded the definition of what it means to be a parent, overturning a previous ruling. For 25 years, the court had held that the nonbiological parent in a same-sex couple had no standing to seek custody or visitation rights after a breakup. But Judge Abdus-Salaam wrote that the previous ruling had become “unworkable when applied to increasingly varied familial relationships.” In a tightly reasoned decision, she determined that nonbiological parents did have standing to seek custody if they showed “by clear and convincing evidence that all parties agreed to conceive a child and to raise the child together.” Here's hoping she's at peace and that the police are able to get answers.