Usually when I write a blog post I target either prospective clients or fellow practitioners. My hope is that the points I make resonate sufficiently to either direct a client my way, help a colleague to think of a problem in a different way, or point out something that may have been overlooked.
This post, however, is aimed at a completely different audience, that being college and law students, and young lawyers, just getting established in their careers.
The basis for this is two related events in the last few weeks. The first is the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Decision in the case called Glover v. Junior, 2025 Pa. Lexis 390 (March 20, 2025). Several friends and colleagues have already written about the case, so I see no need to go into much detail. By way of an over-simplification, the case involves a female same-sex married couple who engaged in assisted reproductive technology with one partner giving birth to a child. The couple separated before the child was born, which gave rise to lengthy and emotional child custody litigation. That custody litigation culminated in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recognizing the concept of intent-based parentage.
The second event is that shortly after the Glover decision was announced and the related articles and blogs started to appear, I got an email from a college student I know asking about this decision, where the law goes from here, as well as questions about same-sex marriages and related social justice issues. Basically, questions I did not think college students thought about; at least in my day, they did not.
From there I thought about the recent significant issues in the law and social justice and how several of them arise in a family law context. While Pennsylvania’s recognition of same-sex marriage in Whitewood v. Wolf, 2014 U.S. Dist. Lexis 68771 (M.D. Pa. May 20, 2014) revolves around constitutional law questions, the case gets to the emergent definition of “family” and the implications go far into the family law world.
Following Whitewood was the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022). Most people think of that case as the Supreme Court’s ban on abortion; however, the decision reaches into areas of personal rights and protections and how far governments can go in regulating things like childbirth and personal choice.
All of this leads up to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in Glover and the corresponding introduction in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives of Pennsylvania’s version of the Uniform Parentage Act, HB350. This piece of legislation addresses the gaps that still exist in the areas of assisted reproduction, a topic of interest to both same-sex and heterosexual couples. And what is the common denominator in all of this? Lawyers with a background in family law. That can be the lawyers who argue the cases, both for and against; the legislative assistants drafting the proposed legislation; and the lobbyists who advocated one way or the other relative to the new legislation. All of these people need a background in family law.
Translating this to the student interested in law as a career, or the young lawyer, the line of cases noted demonstrates the interrelationship of family law and evolving social policy. This is not only true for the LGBTQ+ community, but also to the heterosexual community in that technology is advancing faster than the law. If you are creative, dedicated, and interested in emerging social policy as it applies to actual people on a daily basis, family law is for you.
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