A years-long custody battle over an Afghan girl orphaned as an infant in a 2019 U.S. military raid has likely reached its end, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up an appeal from her Afghan relatives. The decision leaves the Virginia Supreme Court's ruling in place, making it most likely the end of the yearslong dispute. The 7-year-old is being raised by a Virginia-based Marine Corps attorney and his wife.
According to the Courthouse News Service, the court declined to add the custody dispute to its docket Monday. The child, known in court filings as Baby Doe, was orphaned at just two months old after her parents and five siblings were killed during a U.S. military operation in rural Afghanistan in September 2019, per the Associated Press reporting cited in the Boston Globe's coverage of the Supreme Court's denial. She lived with Afghan relatives until a Virginia court granted custody to Joshua Mast, a Marine Corps attorney, and his wife, Stephanie, the same outlet reports.
As the Boston Globe reported, citing the Associated Press, the baby was found in the rubble of the raid and hospitalized at Bagram Air Base near Kabul, where Joshua Mast decided with his wife to adopt her. Mast later helped the family leave Afghanistan during the 2021 U.S. military withdrawal, according to the same AP account, before taking the child at a U.S. refugee resettlement center over her relatives' objections.
A Contested Adoption Finalized From Afar
A Fluvanna County judge, Richard Moore, granted the Masts a final adoption in December 2020 while the child was still in Afghanistan with relatives, according to NBC News. The Afghan relatives challenged that adoption, arguing Virginia had no authority over a foreign child and that the orders were based on Mast repeatedly misleading the judge, the report states. The Masts obtained the final adoption order without notifying the Afghan couple raising her, per the Globe's account of the Associated Press reporting.
The State Department, meanwhile, worked to reunite the girl with her Afghan family. Under President Donald Trump's first administration, the department insisted the United States was obligated under international law to work with the Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross to unite the child with her closest surviving relatives, NBC News reports. Those surviving relatives were identified as a cousin and his wife, who raised the girl for 18 months in Afghanistan, the outlet notes.
A 2022 Associated Press report about the adoption raised alarms at the highest levels of government, from the Taliban to the White House, according to ABC7 Chicago, citing that same Associated Press reporting.
Courts Split, Then Virginia's Top Court Rules
Lower courts in Virginia initially agreed with the Afghan couple, who had asked judges to undo the adoption. In July 2024, the Court of Appeals of Virginia voided Mast's adoption of the child, per Courthouse News. An earlier Associated Press report on that ruling noted the child's fate remained unresolved at that stage of the litigation.
But the Virginia Supreme Court reversed course, ruling in February that the Masts would keep the child. The court cited a six-month deadline in state law, finding that the statute cementing adoption orders after six months bars the Afghan relatives from challenging the court, according to the same NBC News report. Under Virginia Code, a final adoption order generally cannot be attacked in a direct or collateral proceeding after six months, including for fraud, once no appeal has been taken to the Court of Appeals. Notably, the Court of Appeals of Virginia's own opinion had stated that a final adoption order may still be attacked after six months for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, describing the order as void from the outset for lacking that jurisdiction — a point in apparent tension with the high court's later ruling.
Three justices on the Virginia Supreme Court dissented sharply, calling what happened in the case “wrong,” “cancerous” and “like a house built on a rotten foundation,” per NBC News.
Masts Say Reopening the Case Would Harm the Girl
The Masts have insisted throughout the litigation that they acted honorably to save the child and give her a loving home, and they dispute the Afghan family's kinship claims, according to the Globe's reporting on the Associated Press account. They have argued that reopening the adoption at this point would significantly disrupt the girl, who is now 7 years old and has lived with the Masts' family for years, the same reporting states.
The Afghan relatives' Supreme Court appeal was backed by a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and by groups supporting veterans and international adoptees, per the Globe's account. The Supreme Court's orders list for October 19, 2026, identifies the case as 26-164, A.A. et al. v. Mast, Joshua, et al., according to the Supreme Court of the United States. With the denial, the Virginia Supreme Court's ruling in the Masts' favor stands, a decision NBC News described as likely to end the yearslong dispute.
