Opinion ID: 2550843
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Does SB 84 Violate The Fourteenth Amendment?

Text: Smith's final constitutional claim is that SB 84 violates the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Smith first argues that the Family Court violated her due process rights by failing to consider whether her rights as ANS's sole parent were being unconstitutionally infringed, before determining whether Guest had any parental rights at all. Smith relies on Troxel v. Granville , [57] where the United States Supreme Court held that a nonparent visitation statute violated a parent's due process rights because it effectively permit[ted] any third party seeking visitation to subject any decision by a parent concerning visitation of the parent's children to state-court review. [58] Smith contends that SB 84 similarly enables a nonparent, such as Guest, to petition the Family Court for visitation rights without requiring the Court to defer to Smith's decision, as ANS's sole parent, that that visitation would not be in ANS's best interests. Troxel does not control these facts. The issue here is not whether the Family Court has infringed Smith's fundamental parental right to control who has access to ANS by awarding Guest co-equal parental status. Rather, the issue is whether Guest is a legal parent of ANS who would also have parental rights to ANSrights that are co-equal to Smith's. This is not a case, like Troxel, where a third party having no claim to a parent-child relationship ( e.g., the child's grandparents) seeks visitation rights. [59] Guest is not any third party. Rather, she is a (claimed) de facto parent who (if her claim is established, as the Family Court found it was [60] ) would also be a legal parent of ANS. Because Guest, as a legal parent, would have a co-equal fundamental parental interest in raising ANS, allowing Guest to pursue that interest through a legally-recognized channel cannot unconstitutionally infringe Smith's due process rights. In short, Smith's due process claim fails for lack of a valid premise. Our holding is supported by other state court decisions. [61] For example, in In re Parentage of L.B., [62] the Washington Supreme Court addressed a situation nearly identical to the case at bar. There, the court considered whether the petitioner had standing to petition for custody of a minor child conceived through artificial insemination during the petitioner's 12-year same-sex relationship with the child's biological mother. [63] The biological mother argued that allowing the petitioner to seek custody of the minor child would infringe the biological mother's fundamental parental interests under Troxel. [64] The Washington Supreme Court held it would not, because de facto parents were in legal parity with biological and adoptive parents. [65] If the petitioner could establish de facto parentage, then the petitioner and the biological mother would both have a fundamental liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of [the child]. [66] In those circumstances, there could be no due process violation. [67] Some courts have concluded that under the common law, de facto parentage does not confer standing to petition for custody or visitation of a minor child. [68] Those cases are inapposite, however, because the right conferred here was created legislatively, not judicially. The Delaware General Assembly has expressly decreed that de facto parents are legal parents who have standing to petition for custody. [69] Moreover, none of those cases addresses the legal question presented herewhether a law permitting a de facto parent to seek custody of a minor child violates the due process rights of the child's other legal parent. [70] As discussed above, we conclude that it does not.
Smith next claims that SB 84 violates the Equal Protection Clause, because it constitutes special legislation, specifically directed at her, that changes the result in Smith I. This argument essentially restates, albeit in a different form, Smith's earlier claim that Sections 5 and 6 of SB 84 seek to nullify this Court's Smith I decision. [71] More specifically, Smith argues that because those Sections undermine the finality of, and substantively overturn, Smith I, SB 84 draw[s] a line between [Smith] and all others who have prevailed in a final judicial determination [by] purporting to render Smith I a nullity, but permitting all other Supreme Court decisions to stand. To succeed on an equal protection claim under a class of one theory, the plaintiff must show that: (1) there are other similarly-situated people who were treated differently, and (2) there is no rational basis for that disparate treatment. [72] To prevail on the first prong, the plaintiff must show that the other similarly-situated persons are  prima facie identical in all relevant respects. [73] Smith's claim fails, because she cannot show disparate treatment as between herself and other similarly-situated persons. That is, SB 84 does not create a class of one, as Smith argues. Sections 5 and 6 of SB 84 do not draw a line between [Smith] and all others who have prevailed in a final judicial determination, because SB 84 does not reverse or render our decision in Smith I a nullity. [74] Nor does SB 84 amount to special legislation that creates an arbitrary and discriminatory classification, since it does not specifically name Smith as the person who is to benefit (or be harmed). [75] To the contrary, SB 84 operates identically and in the same manner upon all persons similarly situated i.e., all those who are the subject of a judicial decision that de facto parent status is not recognized in Delaware. [76] Because SB 84 does not create any classifications among those who have been subjected to that judicial determination, it does not offend the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.