Posted by Nydia Streets of Streets Law in Florida Paternity
A recent Florida Supreme Court case may affect same-sex couples, or individuals who choose to have a child via artificial insemination. When an at-home insemination kit is used versus artificial insemination by use of a laboratory, does the male whose sperm is used relinquish all parental rights to the child who is conceived as a result? This was a question answered by the Florida Supreme Court in Brito v. Salas, SC2024-1184 (Fla. December 30, 2025).
In the original underlying case, a female same-sex couple requested sperm from a known male. The male provided the sperm and one of the women of the couple became pregnant. Subsequently, the same-sex couple got married and when the child was born, both women were listed as parents on the child’s birth certificate (the male was not). The women subsequently raised the child together until their separation about a year later, at which point the biological mother of the child took the child and moved out of the marital residence. The male then filed a paternity action, seeking to establish parental and custodial rights over the child. The trial court dismissed the petition, reasoning that the male was a sperm donor within the meaning of the statutes, and that he waived any parental rights. The district appellate court upheld this decision, and then the Florida Supreme Court reviewed the case when a conflict was certified between the appellate decision in this case and another district’s appellate case.
The Supreme Court discussed the history of the statute concerning sperm donors. The Supreme Court noted “We find the Legislature’s precise word choice here to be significant. Under accepted rules of grammar, section 742.14’s use of ‘the’ rather than ‘a’ in “[t]he donor” and ‘the commissioning couple’ presupposes that these are particular and definable actors who must be involved for the statute to apply. [. . .] By contrast, the use of an indefinite article, such as “a,” does not denote a specific noun, but merely a member of a class.”
The Court concluded “In conclusion, it is a mistake to interpret this provision in isolation and devoid of the whole context in which it is used. See Alachua County v. Watson, 333 So. 3d 162, 170 (Fla. 2022) (‘Perhaps no interpretive fault is more common than the failure to follow the whole-text canon . . . .’ (quoting Scalia & Garner, supra, at 167)). Indeed, the more one isolates terms, such as ‘donor,’ from the rest of the statutory scheme, the less coherent that interpretation of section 742.14 becomes. Put differently, ‘donor’ does not so much define the terms that surround it as it is defined by those surrounding terms. Those other terms, as well as the context and history of these statutes, support our conclusion that section 742.14 does not apply unless [artificial reproductive technology] is involved.”
This article cannot be taken as legal advice. Schedule your consultation with a Miami family law attorney for specific advice about your case.