WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Alabama’s Supreme Court was wrong to allow the birth mother of three children to deny visitation rights to her former lesbian partner, who had adopted the children while the couple lived together in Georgia.

Alabama’s high court had ruled last year that the state did not have to legally recognize the adoption and compel the birth mother to allow the adoptive mother to visit the children.

The two women involved in the case are identified as E.L. and V.L in order to protect their privacy.

The three children were conceived and born through artificial insemination during a long term relationship between the two women, who never married and have since separated.

Because Alabama at the time would not approve adoptions by same-sex couples, the two women moved to Fulton County Georgia, where a judge was “receptive to same-sex parents seeking such.”

V.L., the non-biological mother, adopted the three children with the Georgia court’s approval. After the two women ended their relationship in 2011, the biological mother, E.L, refused to allow V.L. to see the children. With the family once again living in Alabama, E.L. argued that the 2007 Georgia adoption was invalid in the state.

In 2014 the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals ruled that a lower court had erred by allowing V.L. visitation rights to the children. That ruling was later reversed, thus taking the case to the Alabama Supreme Court.

The court found that Alabama did not recognize the Georgia adoption, arguing that the Georgia court did not properly apply its own state laws.

According to Alabama Justice Tom Parker, adoption is not a fundamental right, but a privilege.

“Alabama has unequivocally held that adoption is a purely statutory right; an Alabamian’s right to adopt does not exist apart from Alabama’s positive law,” wrote Parker. “Thus, adoption is a privilege, not a right.”

The lone dissenter, Alabama Justice Greg Shaw, argued the Alabama Supreme Court did not have the right to determine whether or not Georgia applied its own laws correctly.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that “the Alabama Supreme Court erred in refusing to grant (the Georgia court’s) judgment full faith and credit.”

According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, roughly 65,000 adopted children currently live with a gay parent.