Married couple scoff at being told infant must have father's surname

By The Associated Press

05.20.02

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Editor's note: On May 24, Mayor Anthony Williams issued emergency regulations requiring the District of Columbia Department of Health to allow parents to give their children either the mother's or father's surname. "Parents should have the free choice to name their child as they see fit," Williams said.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Like most new parents, Margaret McGilvray and Dan Redmond were proud and excited when their first child was born in March at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C.

They named him Alexander and then, being modern American parents, they decided to give him both of their family names. They used Margaret's family name, the historic Scottish moniker of McGilvray, as Alexander's surname with Dan's surname as a middle name.

They didn't know they were breaking the law.

A District of Columbia health department regulation issued May 1, 2000, requires that children born in wedlock be given their father's surname. Single women may give their children their own last names if they wish.

"I thought this must be some law from 1890 or something that had never been taken off the books," said Redmond, an architectural photographer. "So I wrote a very nice two-page letter, explained our circumstances and asked for a waiver. They said no."

Alexander is now 3 months old and still doesn't have a birth certificate. On May 13, the Arlington couple sued in U.S. District Court in Washington, saying the city's rule violates their constitutional right to privacy and free speech and discriminates against women. They want the district to drop the rule and issue a birth certificate naming their child as they wish: Alexander Hanley Redmond McGilvray.

"I'm not some strong-arming feminist trying to make my husband name our child after me," said Margaret McGilvray, a management consultant. "We just would like to name our son without the District of Columbia telling us what we can and can't name him."

Carl Wilson, vital records registrar for the district, said on May 14 that the purpose of the guidelines is to establish identity at birth but parents may obtain a court order to amend the birth certificate to reflect their preference.

"We couldn't deny a birth certificate, because every birth must be officially registered," Wilson said. "There is a process by which a name could be legally changed."

Anthony Bullock, a spokesman for Mayor Anthony A. Williams, said he thought the D.C. Council and the mayor probably would consider an amendment to the provision. "My sense is that this regulation has no place in the 21st century, and probably not in the last half of the 20th," Bullock said.

Most babies of married couples still carry their father's surname and state laws vary on how to handle cases where parents are in dispute about the child's name. The D.C. case is quite unusual, said Deborah Baumgarten, an attorney for the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund.

"We're not aware of anyone in the country enforcing this sort of law for years," she said.