On April 28, 2026, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that judges cannot reach back in time to apply marriage based parentage laws to same sex partners who never married, shutting down a theory that could have given a nonbiological partner legal parent status years after a breakup. The justices overturned an appeals court order that had told a trial judge to decide whether the couple “would have been married” if same sex marriage had been legal earlier. In plain terms, the court stuck with a straightforward reading of the artificial insemination statute: its protections apply to spouses, not to unmarried partners.
What the high court said
Writing for the majority, Justice R. Patrick DeWine said U.S. Supreme Court decisions guarantee equal access to marriage but do not let courts “retroactively rewrite” state laws that tie benefits to marital status. The court held that R.C. 3111.95(A), Ohio’s non spousal artificial insemination provision, “applies only to spouses” and rejected the First District’s instruction to run a “would have been married” test. The opinion and the court's case announcement are posted by the Supreme Court of Ohio.
How the dispute began
The case grew out of a long term relationship between Priya Shahani and Carmen Edmonds, who raised three children together that were conceived through artificial insemination. Shahani is the birth mother, and Edmonds sought to be recognized as a legal parent. According to the appellate record, the couple lived together for years, welcomed a daughter in 2012 and twins in 2014, and separated shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision. Those factual findings and the appellate court’s reasoning are set out in the First District Court of Appeals opinion, available on Justia.
What the appeals court ordered and why the high court said no
The First District had ruled that the trial court should decide whether Edmonds and Shahani would have married at the time of conception if same sex marriage had been legal, and if the answer was yes, allow Edmonds to seek parentage under statutes tied to marriage. The Ohio Supreme Court said that approach effectively asks judges to backdate a couple’s marital status in a way that would bring common law marriage back to life, a power the legislature has taken away, and that it went beyond what the appeals court was allowed to do. CourtNewsOhio has summarized the court’s reasoning and its direction to send the case back for other unresolved issues.
The statute at the center of the fight
The key provision is R.C. 3111.95(A), which treats a consenting husband as a child’s legal father when a married woman uses non spousal artificial insemination. The statute explicitly links that outcome to marriage, as shown in the text of the Ohio Revised Code. The Supreme Court emphasized that neither Obergefell nor Pavan requires lower courts to revise that wording in equity, so it cannot be applied to unmarried partners from earlier relationships. Coverage by Bloomberg Law notes that this reading narrows one judicial route nonbiological parents in pre Obergefell relationships had tried to use.
What this means for same sex families
The ruling will push many nonbiological partners who were not married at the time of conception toward other tools to secure parentage, such as adoptions, step parent proceedings or equitable parent claims, instead of relying on the artificial insemination statute. Advocacy groups and legal clinics continue to steer families toward pre marriage planning, parentage actions and second parent adoptions as the most reliable protections. The family law guide from Equality Ohio outlines practical steps and checklists. Lawmakers could choose to amend the statute, but until that happens the court’s interpretation is the one that governs.
Remand, concurrence and what’s next
The high court sent the case back to the First District so that court can address other arguments the parties raised instead of resolving every possible parentage theory itself. Justice Jennifer Brunner concurred in the judgment but warned that the majority was relying on an argument that was not fully developed earlier in the case, and suggested that some claims should be handled on remand. The Supreme Court of Ohio has posted the full opinion, and the First District will now decide which remaining theories, if any, can legally establish parentage when it takes the case back up.
