{"id":367510,"date":"2026-10-19T13:22:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T18:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-appeal-in-disputed-afghan-adoption-case"},"modified":"2026-10-19T13:22:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T18:22:21","slug":"supreme-court-declines-to-hear-appeal-in-disputed-afghan-adoption-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-appeal-in-disputed-afghan-adoption-case","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court docket declines to listen to enchantment in disputed Afghan adoption case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"prism-article-body\">\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \"><span class=\"oyrPY qlwaB AGxeB \">WASHINGTON &#8212; <\/span>The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal in a disputed adoption case involving an Afghan child orphaned in a U.S. Army raid. <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The child&#8217;s relatives appealed to the high court after a U.S. Marine who helped evacuate them from Afghanistan took custody of the girl despite State Department efforts to reunite her with her Afghan family.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">A <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/afghan-baby-us-marine-custody-battle-b157557538b84b288a0a8415735e24ab\">2022 Associated Press report<\/a> about the case raised alarms at the highest levels of government, from the Taliban to the White House. <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The child&#8217;s parents were killed in September 2019 when U.S. Army Rangers, along with Afghan forces, raided a rural compound. <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The baby was found in the rubble and hospitalized at Bagram Air Base near Kabul, where military lawyer Joshua Mast decided with his wife to adopt her. <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">But the State Department during President Donald Trump\u2019s first administration worked with the Afghan government to track down surviving relatives, identified as a cousin and his wife.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The Afghan couple raised her for 18 months, but during that time the Masts also obtained a final adoption order from a Virginia court without notifying them. The Masts have insisted they acted honorably to save a child and give her a loving home. <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">In 2021, Joshua Mast helped the family leave Afghanistan during the U.S. military\u2019s chaotic withdrawal from the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Once they were in the U.S., Mast took the child at a refugee resettlement center over her relatives&#8217; objections.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The Afghan couple went to court, asking judges to undo the adoption they said was deeply flawed from the start. Lower courts in Virginia agreed. But the state&#8217;s highest court decided in the Masts&#8217; favor, citing a six-month deadline in state law. <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Their Supreme Court appeal was backed by a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan as well as groups that support veterans and international adoptees. <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The Masts dispute the family&#8217;s kinship and argue that reopening the adoption now would be a significant disruption for the girl, who is now 7 and has been living with their family for years. <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">___ <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">Galofaro reported from Louisville, Kentucky. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.com\/US\/wireStory\/supreme-court-declines-hear-appeal-disputed-afghan-adoption-137382022\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON &#8212; The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal in a disputed adoption case involving an Afghan child orphaned in a U.S. Army [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":367513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15264,41882,41880,10521,5010,7037,41881,399,19067,6664,636],"class_list":["post-367510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-associated-press","tag-bagram-air-base","tag-joshua-mast","tag-kabul","tag-kentucky","tag-louisville","tag-place-navy-lawyer","tag-state-division","tag-taliban","tag-united-states-navy","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367512,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367510\/revisions\/367512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.etrafficlane.com\/60dollarmiracle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}