# Michael H. v. Gerald D.

> Supreme Court of the United States · August 30, 1989 · 491 U.S. 110

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9431741

## Case

- **Full name:** MICHAEL H. Et Al. v. GERALD D.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** August 30, 1989
- **Citations:** 491 U.S. 110; 109 S. Ct. 2333; 105 L. Ed. 2d 91; 1989 U.S. LEXIS 2977
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by O'Connor
- **Judges:** Scalia, O'Connor, Stevens, White, Kennedy, Marshall, Blackmun, Brennan
- **Cited by:** 571 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Questioned by D.M.T. v. T.M.H., 38 Fla. L. Weekly Supp. 812 (2013).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9431741

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that nothing in the older sources or older cases specifically addressed “the power of the natural father to assert parental rights over a child born into a woman’s existing marriage with another man” and that nothing in the caselaw showed that the states “in fact aw…
- explaining that the illegitimacy of certain legislative irrebuttable presumptions did not rest on procedural due process, but rather on “the adequacy of the ‘fit’ between the classification and the policy that the classification serves,” in rejecting the assertion of a procedu…
- concluding that biological father who had an established relationship with his child did not have liberty interest sufficient to invalidate state statutory presumption that the mother’s husband was the child’s father
- recognizing that a presumed father and an alleged father both have a unique claim to parent the child and stating that the resolution of such disputes is a matter of public policy governed by state law

## Opinion text

Justice O’Connor,
with whom Justice Kennedy joins,
concurring in part.
I concur in all but footnote 6 of Justice Scalia’s opinion. This footnote sketches a mode of historical analysis to be used when identifying liberty interests protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that may be somewhat inconsistent with our past decisions in this area. See Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972). On occasion the Court has characterized relevant traditions protecting asserted rights at levels of generality that might not be “the most specific level” available. Ante, at 127-128, n. 6. See Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 12 (1967); Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78, 94 (1987); cf. United States v. Stanley, 483 U. S. 669, 709 (1987) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). I would not foreclose the unanticipated by the prior imposition of a single mode of historical analysis. Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 542, 544 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting).

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9431741. Public record. Not legal advice.