A same-sex couple in Lawrence has filed a legal action seeking to force the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to issue a birth certificate listing both of them as the parents of their new baby boy.

Jessica Smith and Casey Leeann Falmer Smith, who live in Old West Lawrence, were legally married in California in 2013, according to court documents. Casey Smith conceived a child through artificial insemination and gave birth to their son on Sept. 16 at Shawnee Mission Medical Center in Johnson County.

“If they had been man and a woman, even if they weren’t married, the state would have automatically put both names on the birth certificate without question,” their attorney David Brown said.

According to Brown, the Smiths initially asked the hospital to list both of them as the boy’s parents at the time he was born, but the hospital declined.

As a result, they filed what is known as an “emergency petition for the determination of parentage” in Douglas County District Court. Judge Sally Pokorny granted that request the same day, issuing an order directing the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s Office of Vital Statistics to issue a birth certificate listing both women as the child’s parents.

But KDHE refused to comply with that order, Brown said, because the agency was not notified of the petition and was not given an opportunity to respond.

And so Wednesday, Brown filed another motion in court to join the Office of Vital Statistics and KDHE Secretary Susan Mosier as defendants in the case.

Brown said he was advised by KDHE that it would be possible for Jessica Smith to adopt the boy through a process similar to a stepchild adoption, but the Smiths refused.

“That’s an unacceptable and discriminatory requirement,” Brown said. “Whoever heard of adopting their own kid?”

Brown cites a Kansas statute, enacted in 1968, that allows artificial insemination, “at the request and with the consent in writing of the husband and wife.”

That law also says any child born as a result of such a procedure “shall be considered at law in all respects the same as a naturally conceived child of the husband and wife so requesting and consenting to the use of such technique.”

Until this year, Kansas did not recognize marriages between same-sex couples. That changed in June when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, and that states cannot refuse to recognize those marriages.

He also cites a 2013 Kansas Supreme Court case, Frazier vs. Goudschaal, that said a child can have two mothers. That case involved a Johnson County couple in which one of the women conceived a child through artificial insemination, and the women had agreed to be co-parents.

KDHE issued a statement Wednesday saying it was reviewing the lawsuit.

“The Kansas Department of Health and Environment is reviewing the lawsuit filed in Douglas County, Kansas to determine the implications of the case in the context of applicable law in the recent ruling from the United States Supreme Court,” KDHE spokeswoman Sara Belfry said in an email.