High court grants same-sex couples adoption rights in Israel

The Supreme Court of Justice unanimously ruled that same-sex couples have the right to adopt children in Israel if they meet the criteria outlined in Section 3 of the Adoption Law. This section establishes the criteria for recognizing a couple eligible for adoption and states, "adoption can only be carried out by (a man) a husband and his wife together."

Until now, the state interpreted this section as granting adoption rights only to a heterosexual couple, consisting of a man and a woman, thereby denying same-sex male and female couples the right to adopt (or foster) children in Israel. Same-sex couples were allowed to adopt children only as exceptions to the rules if they met other sections of the adoption law.

Applications submitted by same-sex couples were considered only if a child could not be placed with a heterosexual couple. Appellants against this restriction in the High Court argued that this wording should be interpreted in a way that one member of the couple cannot adopt a child if the other does not – thus, the law would also apply to same-sex couples.

A previous lawsuit on the same issue was filed in 2017, and the state then committed to taking legislative measures to amend the Adoption Law accordingly. However, this has not been done despite numerous proposed bills on the subject, and the current government is also not ready to advance this matter.

Therefore, the High Court made the decision and unanimously ruled: same-sex couples have the right to adopt children in accordance with the Adoption Law. The government's legal advisor, Gali Baharav-Miara, confirmed before the verdict that the interpretation allowing same-sex couples to adopt children in accordance with Section 3 of the Adoption Law is possible.