In re Gestational Agreement
Utah Supreme Court
449 P.3d 69 (2019)
- Written by Liz Nakamura, JD
Facts
Under Utah’s gestational-surrogacy statute, the ability to enter into a valid gestational-surrogacy agreement was limited to married couples. N.T.B. and J.G.M. (collectively, the intended parents) (plaintiffs), a same-sex male married couple, entered into a gestational-surrogacy agreement with D.B. and G.M. (collectively, the gestational surrogates) (plaintiffs), an opposite-sex married couple, under which the intended parents would have full parental rights to the child conceived and born by the gestational surrogates. The intended parents and the gestational surrogates filed a petition to have the gestational-surrogacy agreement validated. The trial court denied the petition, holding that, under Utah law, the gestational-surrogacy agreement could not be validated unless it was accompanied by medical evidence from the intended mother that she was either unable to physically bear a child or that pregnancy would place either her or the unborn child at unreasonable risk. In other words, the trial court refused to validate the agreement because neither intended parent was a woman. The intended parents and the gestational surrogates appealed, arguing that Utah’s gestational-surrogacy statute was unconstitutional because it denied gestational-surrogacy benefits to same-sex married couples that were readily available to opposite-sex married couples.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Durant, C.J.)
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