Supreme Court Leaves California Parentage Order in Place in Surrogacy Dispute

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to step into a surrogacy custody fight over a newborn with a severe heart defect. Justice Elena Kagan denied an emergency request from Alaska surrogate McKenna West to pause a California court order naming Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar as the boy's legal parents The Guardian.

West, an Alaska nurse, carried the baby as a surrogate. The infant, called Baby Gabriel in court filings, was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a defect that limits blood flow from the left side of the heart and requires major surgery The Guardian. He is the genetic child of Gilkar and Ahmed Slate. West gave birth in Dallas and sought conservatorship over him, which in Texas means legal custody and authority to make decisions Yahoo News.

Ahmed and Gilkar had signed a surrogacy contract with West the previous August. The contract allowed termination of the pregnancy if a fetal abnormality was found. After the heart diagnosis, Ahmed and Gilkar asked West to have an abortion. She refused.

West then traveled to Texas to give birth, moving the dispute across state lines and into parallel cases in two states.

On May 22, 2026, an action was filed against M.W. seeking a judgment of parentage for Baby G., the unborn child she was carrying under the contract. West's Sept. 9 emergency application to the Supreme Court asked for a stay of the resulting ex parte judgment of parentage issued under California's expedited procedure, a fast-track process where a judge can rule after hearing from only one side Emergency Application. Her lawyers called the case one involving "extraordinary circumstances."

Texas officials entered separately. Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened. A Dallas judge ordered that the baby receive medical care. The Texas Supreme Court then ruled that the month-old child could leave Texas for treatment at a Los Angeles hospital.

The denial leaves the California parentage decision in effect. It does not settle questions of conservatorship, who controls medical decisions, or how orders will be enforced across states.

The broader context here is a clash between state systems. California's expedited parentage process and the Texas orders on conservatorship and medical care pointed in different directions. Kagan's denial keeps decision-making with the intended parents recognized in the California judgment, at least for now. It also preserves the transfer to Los Angeles approved by the Texas high court.

Looking at what this means for practitioners, the sequence will get close attention. A contract with a fetal-anomaly termination clause, a surrogate's refusal and travel to another state for birth, and competing filings for parentage and conservatorship created competing claims to legal control. The emergency request limited the Supreme Court to deciding on a stay, not the underlying merits. Further fights over custody and care will now proceed under the parentage order the Court left in place.