No. A parent's constitutional right to a relationship with their child only applies to children who are minors, not adults. The court explained that past Supreme Court decisions protected a parent's right to make decisions about raising their young kids without government interference. But those protections don't cover the relationship a parent has with a grown-up child. In this case, the police officer's actions were aimed at the son, not at intentionally breaking up the mother's relationship with him. The court decided it shouldn't create a new constitutional right for parents of adult children.

No. I don't think the Constitution gives parents a special right to have a relationship with their adult children. When the Supreme Court has talked about parents' rights before, they were usually talking about parents' relationships with their young kids, not grown-ups. Robertson isn't saying the government stopped her from raising a young child or took away her custody of a young child. Those are the kinds of things the Supreme Court has protected before. We don't want to make the Constitution cover new things that it hasn't covered before unless we're really sure about it. Other courts have also said no to cases like this one, where the government didn't mean to affect the parent-child relationship but did so by accident. We know that losing a child at any age is really hard for a parent. But the Constitution doesn't protect people from everything bad that can happen. It's up to the Florida government to make laws about when parents can get money for losing an adult child. We're not going to try to change what the Constitution means to make that happen.

No. The Fourteenth Amendment’s substantive due process protections do not extend to the relationship between a mother and her adult son. The court reasoned that while the Supreme Court has long recognized a parent's fundamental liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of their minor children, this precedent does not support extending such a right to the relationship with an independent adult child. The court distinguished this case from precedents like Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which involved direct state interference with a parent's choices regarding the upbringing of minor children. Here, the state action was not directed at the parent-child relationship itself but incidentally resulted in its termination. The court declined to expand the scope of substantive due process, stating that creating such a right is a matter for the legislature, not the judiciary.

No. I hold that the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive due process protections do not extend to the relationship between a parent and their adult child. The Supreme Court cases extending liberty interests of parents under the Due Process Clause focus on relationships with minor children, not adult children. Robertson does not allege the state has interfered with how she raises her minor child, as was the case in Meyer and Pierce, nor does she claim the state action targeted her custody of her minor child, as in Santosky and Stanley. Therefore, her claim finds no support in Supreme Court precedent, and we decline to further expand the substantive protections of the Due Process Clause. The First, Third, Seventh, and District of Columbia Circuits have similarly rejected claims like Robertson's, where the alleged deprivation was incidental to the defendant's actions. While the parent-adult child relationship is important, the Constitution does not protect against all encroachments by the state onto the interests of individuals. It is the province of the Florida legislature to decide when a parent can recover for the loss of an adult child. We will not circumvent its authority through an unsupported reading of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Patricia Robertson v. Jimmy Hecksel

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