
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 21, 1991                   TAG: 9104210196
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: MINNEAPOLIS                                LENGTH: Short

MINORITY ADOPTION LAW UPHELD IN `BABY D' CASE

A judge has upheld the constitutionality of Minnesota's minority adoption law, ruling that a black child can be taken from her white foster parents and given to her grandparents in Virginia.

The statute gives preference to relatives and same-race adoptive parents. Juvenile Judge Isabel Gomez of Hennepin County sustained it Friday in the case of a 21-month-old child identified in court documents only as Baby D.

The foster parents intend to appeal.

The Minnesota couple contend the state's Minority Heritage Preservation Act is unconstitutional because it singles out minority children and prohibits the courts from deciding solely on what would be best for the child.

But Gomez said the law is constitutional because it was meant to correct "substantial problems arising out of the realities that Minnesota is more than 90 percent white in its racial makeup." - Associated Press

by CNB