Kelly Rutherford Loses Latest Round In Custody Battle As Federal Judge Throws Out Her Request To Get Kids Back

Kelly Rutherford’s request to keep her children in the United States has been rejected. A federal judge ruled the Gossip Girl star’s custody case belongs in state court.

Rutherford filed the last-minute request just an hour after a New York Supreme Court judge ordered the actress’s two children back to their father, Daniel Giersch, last week, reports Page Six. The Gossip Girl immediately filed another lawsuit in Manhattan federal court asking that her children not be deported; however, the judge dismissed the suit the same day.

Kelly Rutherford’s attorney, Wendy Murphy, says the federal judge’s decision was “obviously incorrect” and the actress is appealing the judge’s ruling.

As the Inquisitr previously reported, Kelly Rutherford’s children, Hermes 8, and Helena, 6, flew back to Europe on Tuesday, accompanied by their paternal grandmother.

After the Tuesday, Aug. 11 ruling by Judge Ellen Frances Gesmer ordering that the children be returned to Monaco, Kelly Rutherford said not only was the Supreme Court judge’s ruling illegal and abusive, but seemed to have been made before the Gossip Girl actress walked into the courtroom that morning, according to US Weekly.

“I walked into a courtroom where everything felt like it was already done. It was a done deal. And his mother was sitting there with plane tickets, smiling, ready to take them. Nobody had heard our argument.”

According to Rutherford, the New York judge did not have the authority to send the children back to Monaco.

“Judge Gesmer effectively arrested my children, claiming she had authority under habeas corpus to take them into custody because of a foreign country’s court order. Knowing she had no authority, Judge Gesmer seized my children and their U.S. passports, and forced them to leave the United States and reside in Monaco, a country where neither they nor I, nor even their father, has citizenship.”

Kelly Rutherford and her ex-husband, Daniel Giersch, have engaged in a contentious custody battle since their split in 2010. After a California judge granted the actress sole custody in May, the children spent most of the summer with their mother in New York. When Kelly defied a court order and refused to return the kids back to their father, citing confusion in regards to court orders from California and New York, Daniel’s attorneys accused the actress of kidnapping and filed a writ of habeas corpus to ensure the children’s return to Giersch.

A hearing in the custody case is set for September 3 in Monaco.

[Image by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images]