Alabama's Child Support Reform Act, Code Ala. Sec. 30-3-194(c), requires marriage licenses to contain the Social Security numbers of both husband and wife. Today's Tuscaloosa News reports that most Alabama counties do not enforce the requirement, but Tuscaloosa County is one of the few that does. Now Catholic clergy in Tuscaloosa say that the requirement is interfering with their efforts to encourage couples to marry. Immigrants in the U.S. illegally, or those here legally but without a green card permitting them to work, are unable to obtain Social Security cards. Clergy in the Catholic Diocese of Birmingham have taken an interest in challenging the Alabama law. They say that couples who are sexually active but not married are barred from receiving Holy Communion. This, they argue, means that the government is controlling whether a couple can receive religious sacraments.
The Alabama statute, like that in other states, was enacted in order to comply with a provision of the federal child support enforcement statutes (42 USC Sec. 666(a)(13)). Last May in Buck v. Stankovic, (MD PA, May 1, 2007), a Pennsylvania federal district court issued a preliminary injunction barring Pennsylvania authorities from insisting that an individual prove his or her lawful presence in the United States as a condition of obtaining a marriage license.
