In 2019, a Utah Supreme Court Case provided an update to the Utah Uniform Parentage Act. It started when a married couple, both men, wanted to enter into a gestational agreement with a woman and her husband for the woman to act as a surrogate for the married couple so they could become parents. At the time Utah would not consider this type of gestational agreement as enforceable since it could not be validated. In order to validate a gestational agreement, certain conditions must be met. One of these conditions required for medical evidence to be presented to show that "the intended mother is unable to bear a child or is unable to do so without unreasonable risk to her physical or mental health or to the unborn child..." The intended parents filed a joint petition with the gestational mother and her husband asking the district court to validate their agreement. The court denied the petition saying, "’mother’ and ‘her’ plainly refer to a woman," and since neither of the intended parents was a woman the Court determined that the request must be denied.
The petitioners argued that the interpretation by the district court violated the Uniform Operation of Laws provision, and the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. In addition to these arguments the petitioners argued that “mother” should be interpreted as a neutral way to say “parent”. The State of Utah also submitted an amicus brief agreeing to the interpretation of “mother” as gender neutral.
After reviewing the case, the Utah Supreme Court agreed with the petitioners and concluded that the female specific language in the act was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses. They also found that the medical evidence requirement section was severable from the rest of the Utah Uniform Parentage Act, so the remainder of the Utah Uniform Parentage Act could remain in force while the medical evidence requirement containing the gender-specific language of “mother” and “her” could be stricken. In May of 2020 a new bill amending the Code was put into effect, which amended Utah Code 78B-15-803 and eliminated the medical necessity requirement and gender-specific language.
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