Florida Supreme Court rules sperm donor can seek parental rights

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a sperm donor seeking the ability to pursue parental rights, which could have major repercussions across the country.

Key Takeaways:

• Angel Rivera provided sperm to Ashley Brito and Jennifer Salas, who used an at-home kit to inseminate Brito.

• Brito and Salas got married, and the child's birth certificate listed the two women as the parents.

• The two separated about a year later, and Rivera filed a petition to be named as the child's legal father.

• A circuit judge and an appeals court both ruled against Rivera, saying sperm donors relinquish their parental rights. Rivera then brought the case to the Florida Supreme Court.

• In a 4-3 ruling, the justices found that at-home sperm donors can sue to pursue parental rights.

The Details:

A divided Florida Supreme Court ruled that being an at-home sperm donor — meaning 'donating' sperm from person to person rather than as an anonymous donor through a sperm bank — does not bar the donor from pursuing parental rights. In 2019, Brito and Salas decided they wanted to have a baby, and asked Rivera, a friend, to be the sperm donor. He agreed, and they arranged for him to donate at their home, without the involvement of any doctors or lawyers. The women got married during the pregnancy, and Brito gave birth to a baby boy. Since the women were married, they were each named as the boy's parents on the birth certificate, not Rivera. Yet he remained involved with the family in some fashion, referring to the boy as "our son" in a text to the women.

But by 2021, the women filed for divorce, and both Brito and Rivera filed to make Rivera, and not Salas, the boy's legal parent. This set off a years-long legal battle, with Salas fighting to keep her place as the boy's legal parent, and Rivera arguing he had the right to pursue parental rights, despite Florida law saying otherwise.

A 1993 statute automatically strips sperm donors of any parental rights, which Rivera sought to challenge. The rise of at-home inseminations has caused complications, with hopeful parents turning to friends, as Brito and Salas did, or to online options like Facebook in an effort to save money.

READ: Woman learns she was donor-conceived: ‘I wasn’t the person I was’

The first two court decisions came down against Brito and Rivera, but the Florida Supreme Court ruled in their favor. While Rivera was not granted parental rights, the court found he shouldn't be automatically barred from pursuing them based on his status as an at-home sperm donor; the ruling would not affect those who donate through a fertility clinic.

“We find it implausible that this brief provision ... was meant to regulate all reproductive material, and all nontraditional procreative methods,” Justice Jamie Grosshans wrote for the majority.

Mark Neumaier, Rivera's lawyer, said he is happy about the ruling. “This gives him a shot at having a relationship with his child,” Neumaier said. “He can now go to court and show that ... he’s had a continued interest in connection with the child ... rather than being told ‘No, this was an artificial insemination case, and therefore, you don’t get to go to court, you’ve already waived your rights.’”

Eric Maier, who represents Brito, likewise celebrated the decision.

“This really isn’t a decision about the rights of same sex couples to have a child. ... It says a person, in this case a man, who has a constitutional right to parent his biological child, cannot be deemed to relinquish that right so cavalierly without some of the paperwork that you would see in these situations,” Maier said. “The constitutional right to be a parent certainly can be relinquished, it can be lost, but not so easily as a ‘he said she said’ about what was your intention when you gave me the sperm sample.”

Why It Matters:

Issues such as this are arising due to how largely unregulated the fertility industry is. Children conceived through donor sperm or egg are learning they have hundreds, if not thousands of siblings. Meanwhile, these children are often deprived of their biological parents — access to them, information about them, and relationships with them.

Instead of being seen as human beings with their own intrinsic rights, these children are treated as products to which adults feel entitled, with little concern for the notion that a child might want to have their biological parent in their life. In fact, there seems to be little concern as to what is in the best interest of the child at all in these situations.

The Bottom Line:

A Harvard Medical School study found that 62% of children conceived through donor technologies believe it to be unethical and immoral, often because they are deprived of information about their backgrounds, heritage, and medical histories.

“I am a human being, yet I was conceived with a technique that had its origins in animal husbandry,” one donor-conceived person wrote in a book for Anonymous Us. “Worst of all, farmers kept better records of their cattle’s genealogy than assisted reproductive clinics … how could the doctors, sworn to ‘first do no harm’ create a system where I now face the pain and loss of my own identity and heritage?”