Jay & Campbell’s work in family formation, child welfare, and appellate litigation is sometimes the subject of news coverage. The articles collected here were reported and published by independent news organizations; the firm links to them for informational purposes.
CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig reports on the pending Florida appellate case in which the Attorney General has intervened to challenge the state’s gestational surrogacy statutes, and marks the 40th anniversary of the first birth through gestational surrogacy with interviews of Jill Brand — the first person born through the procedure — her mother, and the physician who oversaw the pregnancy. An extended segment aired on The Lead with Jake Tapper.
Slate’s senior legal correspondent reports on the Florida Attorney General’s intervention in a surrogacy parentage case and what the State’s constitutional theories could mean for surrogacy, donor conception, and adoption. Katie Jay, appellate counsel for the parents, is quoted on the legal arguments and their implications for Florida families.
Tampa’s NBC affiliate covers the Attorney General’s intervention in a Florida surrogacy case and the potential consequences for assisted reproduction in the state, citing Katie Jay’s account of the State’s position.
A joint Times/Herald investigation into how a routine surrogacy parentage matter became a constitutional fight over assisted reproduction in Florida. Katie Jay, appellate counsel for the parents, is quoted throughout.
An explainer on Florida’s surrogacy statutes, the proposals to change them, and the pending litigation. Katie Jay is quoted on the scope of the State’s arguments.
A commentary on collateral consequences in Florida’s child welfare system, centered on a grandmother’s fight to adopt the grandson she has raised since 2017. Jay & Campbell represented the family and ensured they successfully completed their adoption.
Katie and Sarah write and present regularly on the intersection of family and government.
For National Adoption Month, Katie tells the story behind her practice: her family’s adoption from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the two-year fight to bring her daughter home after the government barred adopted children from leaving the country, and the career change that followed, from bankruptcy litigation to child welfare and adoption law. The essay reflects on the clients the firm serves in its hardest cases — foster parents, relative caregivers, grandparents, and stepparents — and on why, even in the difficult ones, adoption remains a joyful corner of the law.
Responding to a Harvard law professor’s proposal for a presumptive ban on homeschooling, Katie and Sarah draw on their experience as counsel of record in more than a thousand child abuse cases — representing the government, defending accused parents, and serving as guardian ad litem — to argue that parental rights and children’s rights are interrelated rather than opposed, and that a safe parent, not the state, is best positioned to evaluate an individual child’s educational needs. The piece also examines how modern homeschooling differs from the dated portrait the ban proposal relies on.
Written in the wake of two high-profile agency closures, this article examines what happens when an adoption agency becomes insolvent: the regulatory requirements that govern wind-downs, the paths available to a closing agency (informal dissolution, bankruptcy, debarment) and how each affects waiting families’ files and fees, and the fiduciary exposure of agency directors and officers. It closes with best practices for agencies on transparent fee structures and financial stewardship, and practical guidance for families evaluating an agency’s fiscal health.
Katie’s commentary on federal obstacles in intercountry adoption.
Writing for the Bar’s Public Interest Law Section, Sarah and Florida’s Children First Robin Rosenberg examine Florida’s persistent failure to provide legal representation to children in dependency proceedings, where the Guardian ad Litem program reaches only a portion of eligible children and speaks to best interests rather than the child’s expressed interests. The article proposes a practical fix drawn from civil practice: allowing a “next friend” — a foster parent, teacher, physician, or other adult who knows the child — to move the court for appointment of counsel on behalf of children too young or too disabled to ask for a lawyer themselves, and works through the ethical and standing objections to that approach.
