The Michigan Supreme Court offers birth mothers a way forward in custody of LGBTQ children
Carrie Pueblo and her former partner Rachel Haas gave birth to a son in 2008 who was born via in vitro fertilization.
Haas is the boy’s biological mother. It’s not Pueblo. Their relationship ended before same-sex marriage was legal in Michigan.
After Pueblo said in 2020 that Haas cut ties with the boy, she sued for joint custody and custody.
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled Monday, July 24 that Pueblo is eligible to plead her case even though she has no genetic link to the boy.
“To accomplish this, the plaintiff must establish, by compelling evidence, that the parties would have married prior to the conception or birth of the child had Michigan not unconstitutionally prohibited marriage,” the court wrote.
Pueblo and Haas held a civil commitment ceremony in 2007.
Neither Pueblo’s attorney, Reh Stark, nor Haas’ attorney, George Perrett, immediately responded to requests for comment.
At the heart of the case was the so-called “Parent Equitable Doctrine,” which allows a spouse who is not the biological parent of a child conceived during the marriage to seek custody if there is a mutually recognized parent-child relationship.
In a statement signed by five judges, the court wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, who legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, “called for the extension of equality principle teaching to those who, because of discriminatory and unconstitutional Michigan laws, could not marry during their same-sex relationships.”
Two conservative justices, Brian Zahra and David Viviano, disagreed, arguing that the majority’s extension of the equality doctrine and “creating an accompanying ‘but for’ test is unsupported by the law and is likely to have far-reaching implications outside of the custody context.”
The case is now remanded to Kalamazoo County Circuit Court.
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