Missouri's parental consent law allows minors to bypass the consent requirement by receiving permission from a court. Federal courts often required parental consent and notification laws to contain judicial bypass provisions while Roe v. Wade was a standing Supreme Court precedent.
The minor went to a Missouri courthouse in 2018 to seek a judicial bypass for the parental consent law. Court clerk Michelle Chapman interpreted Missouri's law to require her to notify the minor's parents of the hearing. Not wanting to notify her parents, the minor chose to travel to Illinois where she obtained a judicial bypass and an abortion.
Illinois's Parental Notice of Abortion Act was still in place at the time, but abortion businesses were known to have relationships with abortion-friendly judges who could provide judicial bypasses. A bill repealing the parental notice law was passed with pro-abortion Gov. JB Pritzker's signature on Dec. 17, 2021. The repeal became effective on June 1, 2022.
Chapman, represented by lawyers with the state of Missouri, asked the Supreme Court last year to take up her case and determine whether minors have the right to a judicial bypass hearing without parental notification. Her team believed that the Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturning Roe v. Wade could make a difference in the case.
The Supreme Court vacated the 8th Circuit's decision denying that Chapman had immunity from the minor's lawsuit. The court sent the case back to that court to be dismissed as moot. The justices did not provide reasoning for the ruling, but Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent. Jackson's dissent was primarily concerned with procedure, arguing that the court should not have intervened since the case had ended.
