Frank G. v. Renee P.-F., et al.

For nearly a century, this Court has consistently held that an involved biological parent has a Fourteenth Amendment right “to direct the upbringing and education of [his] children.” Pierce v. Soc’y of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus & Mary, 268 U.S. 510, 529 (1925); Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 61 (2000). Yet in the wake of this Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 2605 (2015), which required states to recognize same-sex marriages, the highest courts of several states have held that the parental rights under decisions such as Pierce and Troxel must be relaxed to accommodate the interests of persons in romantic relationships who become involved in the raising of their partners’ biological children. For example, the New York Court of Appeals held in In re Brooke S.B. v. Elizabeth A.C.C., 61 N.E.3d 488 (N.Y. 2016), that, if the parties make a pre-birth agreement, a same-sex or opposite-sex partner of a biological parent has the same rights as a biological parent. In this case, based on Brooke S.B., the courts below awarded parental rights to petitioner’s former partner, who is neither a biological nor an adoptive parent of petitioner’s twins, and then awarded the former partner sole physical and legal custody, giving him full decision-making power. The question presented is: Whether a state violates a biological parent’s rights under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause when it strips the parent of custody in favor of a former partner who is not the child’s biological or adoptive parent, and without affording a presumption that the parent is acting in the best interests of the child.