I’ll be speaking with Tony Sciarrillo and we’ll be talking about some of the new laws and cases affecting school districts in New Jersey.

Here’s a link to the program announcement – NJASBO Legal Update Program

Incidentally, our firm will be hosting a booth at the New Jersey School Boards Association Annual Conference in Atlantic City in October. We’ll be in Booth 1123, across from the Apple booth. (Did you know that our firm runs exclusively on Macs?)

If you attended any of the NJASBO A5 training seminars or Legal Update Programs at which I spoke, please stop by and introduce yourself. We’ll be talking about our Policy Customization Services and In-Service Training Programs – and of course, you’ll probably get some trinket for free!

See you there -

Posted by Victor J. Medina of Medina, Martinez & Castroll, LLC

That said, it’s also right and proper that I give this a new launch because of the launch of my new law firm, Medina, Martinez & Castroll.  That could be the most inartful sentence I’ve written in months but I’m leaving it there because it’s unlikely that anyone but me will read this entire post. 

By way of description, MMC is a law firm based in Pennington, New Jersey, which serves as legal counsel to about a half dozen school districts.  In many cases, we serve as outside general counsel for these school districts, providing legal advice in the area of financial matters, commercial transactions, student discipline, special education, labor relations and policy (to name just a few).  If you’re interested in learning more about my law firm, I encourage you to visit our website and look around. 

As is my policy with our other blog, comments are welcome and appreciated.  It’s my intention to provide the basis for discussion and discourse.  I hope to hear from you soon.

Now, onto the substantive posts…..

- Victor

"A similar law took effect in New Hampshire last year, and Maine is
considering one. Oregon, Alabama, Alaska and Kansas give adoptees over
18 access to their birth certificates. Delaware and Tennessee also
allow access, but with some restrictions. In Vermont, original birth
certificates are available to people over 18 if adoptions were
completed by July 1986."

The ACLU’s position in objecting to the bill is that passage of this legislation would neuter the privacy protection that birth parents believed they would be getting since 1974. 

Here in New Jersey, as with the states not mentioned above, adopted children cannot gain access to their birth records, except by court order.

I would say that the lesson for today is for birth parents, as well as adoptive parents, to understand that the rules in place are fluid and subject to change in the future.  For birth parents, what privacy and protection you believe are in place today may not always be there and you should be ready to discuss the situation with the child you give up for adoption sometime in the future.  For adoptive parents, consider this possible change in the law when deciding how to approach discussion of the circumstances of adoption with your adopted children.