CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SACRAMENTO : Panel Backs Change in Adoption Records

The state Senate’s Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would strip the confidentiality from California adoption records, revealing the identity of thousands of parents who relinquished their children before 1984. The bill, passed on a bipartisan 6-0 vote, would make original birth certificates and court records open to the inspection of adoptees and their adoptive parents and require the state Department of Social Services to release information on the marriages and married names of the birth parents. Birth parents would gain access to the amended birth certificate and other records showing the names and addresses of the adoptive parents. The records would only be available after the adoptees reached age 18. The bill includes a provision requiring the state to conduct a yearlong advertising campaign warning birth parents and adoptees to contact the state if they want to shield their identity.