Clark v. Jeter

Petitioner
Cherlyn Clark
Respondent
Gene Jeter
Petitioner's Claim
That Pennsylvania's six-year statute of limitations for paternity actions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Evalynn Welling
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Craig A. McLean
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor (writing for the Court), William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
None
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
6 June 1988
Decision
Held that Pennsylvania's six-year statute of limitations for paternity actions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Significance
The ruling acknowledged the constitutional right of children born out of wedlock to seek support from their fathers without the restriction of a time limit. The Supreme Court ruled that the Pennsylvania law prohibiting paternity claims after six years did not "provide a reasonable opportunity" for an illegitimate child to obtain parental support. The Court also ruled that the six-year limit, which the state had adopted to prevent the litigation of "stale orfraudulent claims," was not necessary to deter such actions.
New Directions in Family Law
In the second half of the twentieth century, changes in American society challenged traditional notions of family. Substantial increases in divorce rates,illegitimate births, and single-parent families created problems relating tothe financial support of children. The welfare system struggled to cope withincreased demands, while taxpayers complained about the burden of supportingchildren born out of wedlock. Welfare reforms encouraged mothers to identifyfathers of illegitimate children to obtain financial support from them. Butbecause putative fathers had a right to protect themselves from the risk of fraudulent claims, existing state statutes imposed time limits after which illegitimate children could no longer bring paternity actions.
On 11 June 1973, Cherlyn Clark gave birth to a daughter out of wedlock. Ten years later, Clark filed a support complaint on the child's behalf against Gene Jeter, the alleged father, in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Blood tests showed a 99.3 percent probability that Jeter wasthe child's father, but the court entered judgment for Jeter because Pennsylvania law required paternity claims to be brought within six years of the birth of an illegitimate child. The mother argued that this law violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.Constitution, but the court rejected this argument. The mother appealed to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.
While the appeal was pending, the Pennsylvania legislature, to comply with the federal Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984, changed the law thathad established the six-year statute of limitations. The new law, passed on 30 October 1985, allowed paternity claims to be brought within 18 years of a child's birth. In Clark's appeal, however, the Superior Court ruled that the new law was not retroactive and that the six-year statute of limitations did not violate the Constitution.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a writ of certiorari, directing the lower court to forward the case proceedings for review, and decided to take the case to consider issues of constitutionality. The Court did not address the argument that Pennsylvania's new 18-year statute of limitation was retroactive.Though it is usual for the Court to consider an issue of statutory interpretation before considering constitutional claims, in this case the Court determined that Clark had not presented an adequate federal pre-emption argument tothe lower courts. Writing for the unanimous Court, Justice O'Connor noted that the "question of how to interpret the Pennsylvania statute ultimately is amatter of state law." Therefore, the Court went on to consider the equal protection claim.
Important Precedents
Citing Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. (1972), Justice O'Connor noted that the Court had ruled restrictions that "burden illegitimate children for the sake of punishing the illicit relations of their parents" are unconstitutional. In three previous cases concerning paternity claims by illegitimate children, Justice O'Connor wrote, restrictions on the child's right toobtain paternal support were found to violate the Equal Protection Clause tothe Fourteenth Amendment. In Gomez v. Perez (1973), the Court struckdown a Texas law that denied illegitimate children the right to sue for paternal support while granting that right to legitimate children. The Court ruledthat "once a state posits a judicially enforceable right on behalf of children to needed support from their natural fathers there is no constitutionallysufficient justification for denying such an essential right to a child simply because its natural father has not married its mother." In Mills v. Hableutzel (1982), the Court struck down a Texas one-year statute of limitations for paternity claims, ruling that this period of time was insufficient togive an illegitimate child "reasonable opportunity" to bring a paternity claim. And in Pickett v. Brown (1983), the Court struck down a Tennesseelaw imposing a two-year limit on paternity claims. In these cases, the Courtidentified two criteria by which to evaluate statutes of limitations on paternity claims. First, the period during which an illegitimate child could bringa claim must be of reasonable length to protect the child's interests. Second, any time restriction must be necessary to prevent the litigation of "staleor fraudulent" claims against a putative father, who might have difficulty establishing evidence in his defense after the passage of time.
Justice O'Connor indicated that in Mills v. Hableutzel, the Court reasoned that the mother of an illegitimate child would be likely to experience emotional and financial complexities during the child's first year and might find it difficult to bring a paternity claim during that brief time. Furthermore, the Court rejected the argument that this time limit was necessary to avoid fraud because it would be unlikely that evidence a putative father could use in his defense would be lost during the course of one year. Extending thisreasoning to Pickett v. Brown, the Court ruled that Tennessee's two-year statute of limitations was also too short, and that the time limit was not necessary to prevent problems of proof or fraudulent claims, since new blood testing procedures could establish proof of paternity with good reliability.
In Clark v. Jeter, the Court found that Pennsylvania's six-year statute of limitations violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice O'Connor wrote, "Even six years does not necessarily provide areasonable opportunity to assert a claim on behalf of an illegitimate child"and noted that psychological and social issues might prevent a mother of a child born out of wedlock from pressing a claim within this time period. Justice O'Connor also reasoned that financial difficulties would be likely to increase as a child grew older. "Thus is it questionable whether a State acts reasonably when it requires most paternity and support actions to be brought within six years of an illegitimate child's birth."
The Court also rejected the argument that Pennsylvania's six-year statute oflimitation was necessary to prevent fraud in paternity claims. Pennsylvania allowed paternity suits to be brought more than six years after the illegitimate child's birth if the suit was brought within two years of a support payment by the father, and imposed no time limits on some other types of paternitylitigation. Pennsylvania's inheritance laws permitted an illegitimate child to bring a paternity suit as long as there was "clear and convincing evidence"that the alleged father was the child's father. And Pennsylvania imposed nostatute of limitations on a father's right to establish paternity. Furthermore, the Court reasoned, Pennsylvania's new law establishing an 18-year statuteof limitations "is a tacit concession that proof problems are not overwhelming."
Moreover, the Court noted that advances in biotechnology have changed the ways in which proof of paternity is established. In previous years, evidence ofpaternity was not scientifically accurate and paternity claims were difficultto prove or defend after the passage of time. Sophisticated DNA testing, however, can eliminate over 99 percent of those falsely accused of fathering a child and can be administered at any time. The availability of this reliable testing, wrote Justice O'Connor, "is an additional reason to doubt that Pennsylvania had a substantial reason for limiting the time within which paternityand support actions could be brought." In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania's six-year statute of limitations violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and remanded the case forfurther proceedings.
Impact
Clark v. Jeter continued a consistent trend in twentieth century family law to extend constitutionally protected rights to children. Through the end of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court had traditionally avoided adjudicating family conflicts, preferring to leave such matters to the individualstates. But rapid social changes in the twentieth century created conflictsthat necessitated federal judicial involvement. Divorce rates, women enteringthe workforce, abortion and contraception, and nontraditional family structures created controversies that were brought to the nation's courts. As KermitL. Hall pointed out in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, "the family became a battleground for contests spawned by social change [and] the federal government, and especially the Supreme Court, became one of the primary arenas of that struggle."
The basis of the Court's intervention in family law was the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees due process of law and equal protection to all personswithin its jurisdiction. Passed in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment had been adopted to rectify discriminatory race laws after the Civil War and was centralto the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The heightened attention to individual rights resulting from the Civil Rights movement, wrote Hall, "sparked new concerns about national family policies and a new sense of rights consciousness among family members." The Supreme Court began to give new rights to children born out of wedlock, departing from the tradition of Anglo-Saxon law that had privileged marriage by denying family rights to illegitimate children. Starting with Levy v. Louisiana (1968), in which the Court ruled that illegitimate children had the same right as legitimate children to sue fordamages after their mother's death, the Court began to develop a new set of standards pertaining to cases of illegitimacy. In the years since, the Court has consistently struck down obstacles to illegitimate children seeking parental support, but sought to balance children's rights with the rights of putative fathers to defend themselves against false paternity claims.
With new genetic testing that can determine paternity to a greater than 99 percent certainty, the Court found that statutes of limitation on paternity claims, instituted to protect the alleged father's right to establish a defenseagainst a fraudulent claim, are no longer necessary. Clark v. Jeter continues the trend to extend equal protection guarantees to children born outof wedlock.
Related Cases

• Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 68 (1968).
  
• Weber v. Aetna Casualty Surety Co., 406 U.S. 164 (1972).
  
• Gomez v. Perez, 409 U.S. 535 (1973).
  
• Mills v. Hableutzel, 456 U.S. 91 (1982).
  
• Pickett v. Brown, 462 U.S. 1 (1983).

Pro and Con: DNA Testing
DNA testing is one tool used in courts to determine biological relations to children. It has also become a powerful weapon in the fight against crime. DNAevidence has significant advantages over traditional forensic techniques. The DNA evidence at a crime scene is usually more plentiful and may be gatheredfrom a number of sources. It does not decay: samples may be analyzed even years after the fact; dramatically, this longevity has in fact resulted in therelease from prison of people who were wrongly convicted of crimes.
The basic science underlying DNA "fingerprinting" is accepted by critics of DNA evidence in court cases. They maintain, however, that mistakes are often made during laboratory work. Another contention is that the accuracy of probability estimates--the likelihood of making such a match by chance--are overstated.
Remedies proposed to allay these concerns include "sample splitting," whereineach sample is divided in half and tested at two separate laboratories, andtesting of laboratories to determine the quality of their work.
Sources
"DNA Evidence: Boon or Boondoggle for Criminal Justice?" West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Minneapolis, MN: West, 1998.