Cite as: 530 U. S. 57 (2000)
Stevens, J., dissenting
cluded most often in the constellation of liberties protected through the Fourteenth Amendment. Ante, at 65-66 (opinion of O'Connor, J.). Our cases leave no doubt that parents have a fundamental liberty interest in caring for and guiding their children, and a corresponding privacy interest—absent exceptional circumstances—in doing so without the undue interference of strangers to them and to their child. Moreover, and critical in this case, our cases applying this principle have explained that with this constitutional liberty comes a presumption (albeit a rebuttable one) that "natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children." Parham v. J. R., 442 U. S. 584, 602 (1979); see also Casey, 505 U. S., at 895; Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U. S. 745, 759 (1982) (State may not presume, at factfinding stage of parental rights termination proceeding, that interests of parent and child diverge); see also ante, at 68-69 (opinion of O'Connor, J.).
Despite this Court's repeated recognition of these signifi-cant parental liberty interests, these interests have never been seen to be without limits. In Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U. S. 248 (1983), for example, this Court held that a putative biological father who had never established an actual relationship with his child did not have a constitutional right to notice of his child's adoption by the man who had married the child's mother. As this Court had recognized in an earlier case, a parent's liberty interests " 'do not spring full-blown from the biological connection between parent and child. They require relationships more enduring.' " Id., at 260 (quoting Caban v. Mohammed, 441 U. S. 380, 397 (1979)).
Conversely, in Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U. S. 110 (1989), this Court concluded that despite both biological parenthood and an established relationship with a young child, a father's due process liberty interest in maintaining some connection with that child was not sufficiently powerful to overcome a state statutory presumption that the husband of the child's mother was the child's parent. As a result of the
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