Phillip Grigalanz v. Elizabeth Copas

Whether the Fourteenth Amendment permits a State, in the name of parental autonomy, to make the absence of biological or adoptive status conclusive at the courthouse door and deny any evidentiary process to establish de facto or psychological parent status where the caregiver alleges that a legal parent affirmatively created and fostered a durable parent-child relationship and the children developed corresponding dependent family bonds.

Whether that categorical rule is constitutionally permissible where the State's own child­ custody jurisdiction code recognizes a nonparent as a legally consequential "person acting as a parent" who "claims a right to legal custody pursuant to the law of this state," gives that class jurisdictional and interstate-enforcement consequences, but provides no original proceeding in which the claimed status can be adjudicated - thereby also foreclosing judicial consideration of the children's interests in the asserted family relationship.