The Center For Reproductive Medicine, P.C., et al. v. Felicia Burdick-Aysenne, et vir, in Their Individual Capacities and as Parents and Next Friends of Baby Aysenne, Deceased Embryo/Minor

Alabama’s civil wrongful death statute, codified in 1872, imposes civil liability, including punitive damages, for the “death of a minor child .. . caused by the wrongful act, omission, or negligence of any person.” Ala. Code § 6-5-391. In an astonishing decision, and ignoring over 150 years of the statute’s interpretive history, the Supreme Court of Alabama held here that an unimplanted, in vitro embryo constitutes a “minor child” for purposes of the statute, upending the commonsense understanding of the statute around which many Alabamians, including Petitioners, have ordered their businesses and lives. The first question presented is: Does a state supreme court’s unprecedented and unwarranted interpretation of a statute, which has the effect of imposing previously unanticipated punitive liability, violate due process and fair notice rights guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution?

This Court has described the adversarial system of adjudication as a pillar of the American legal process. See, e.g., United States v. Sineneng-Smith, 590 U.S. 371, 376 (2020). To guarantee that parties are requisitely opposed, courts have historically ensured that litigants have proper standing to bring suit—that is, courts generally mandate that litigating parties each have a “personal stake in the outcome of’ a case. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 205 (1962). Otherwise, given the binding nature of stare decisis, non-parties and future litigants that will ultimately be bound by a court’s decision have no guarantee that their legal interests, which include due process rights to notice and a hearing, are being adequately protected. (i)