The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a bitter custody fight over an Afghan war orphan, leaving in place a Virginia high court ruling that affirmed a U.S. Marine’s adoption of the child known in court papers as Baby Doe.
Courthouse News reported from Washington that the justices refused to add the dispute to their docket and would not weigh in on whether the Marine’s adoption unlawfully pulled the infant from the care of Afghan family members.
The decision ends the relatives’ push for high-court intervention and keeps the child with Virginia-based Marine Corps attorney Joshua Mast and his wife, Stephanie. For conservatives who track family law, military service, and finality in adoption decrees, the case now turns on what Virginia’s courts already settled.
Baby Doe was orphaned at two months old in September 2019. U.S. forces found her in the rubble after a military operation in rural Afghanistan killed her parents and five siblings.
She had a fractured skull and femur and severe burns. Troops moved her to a nearby military hospital.
U.S. Forces-Afghanistan then worked with the International Committee for the Red Cross and the Afghan Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to return the child to her uncle. Officials planned to place her with the uncle in early 2020 at the Afghan government’s request. The uncle later transferred guardianship to his son and his wife.
Joshua Mast learned of Baby Doe while serving a short stint as an attorney in October. He became concerned about the child’s well-being.
By then, family reunification work was already underway. Mast still petitioned for custody in Fluvanna County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.
He testified that the child was stateless, that the search for relatives had failed, and that she needed urgent medical care. The local court granted an emergency adoption order and gave Mast and his wife physical care and custody while Baby Doe remained in the military hospital.
Courthouse News described the emergency order as relying on Mast’s statements that the Afghan government did not want custody of the child or jurisdiction over the matter. The court believed Afghanistan would waive jurisdiction within days. The Afghan government never planned on waiving its jurisdiction.
When the United States prepared to move the child to her uncle’s custody in early 2020, Mast sought a restraining order to block the transfer. He was found unlikely to succeed on the merits. Baby Doe went to her uncle’s care.
Mast later employed a fellow attorney practicing in Afghanistan to persuade the family to send the child to the United States for medical treatment.
The Afghan government collapsed on Aug. 15, 2021. After more than a year of communication, an Afghan couple agreed to come with the child to the United States. The husband was described as related to the baby as a cousin’s kin, and the couple later pressed a de facto parent claim.
Upon arrival, Mast presented an Afghan passport for the baby bearing his last name. The couple soon lost the child, who began living with the Masts.
The Afghan relatives accused the Masts of abducting the husband’s baby cousin and said the family received no notice or chance to challenge the custody order. The federal government has claimed the Masts fraudulently obtained custody.
In July 2024, the Court of Appeals of Virginia voided Mast’s adoption of Baby Doe. The appeals court found that the Marine received custody after misrepresenting facts to the local custody court.
The Virginia high court later reversed that ruling and affirmed the adoption. It held that final adoption orders could not be challenged after six months. It also rejected the couple’s constitutional de facto parent argument, finding that doctrine applies only to biological parents.
No American court, the relatives had argued, could constitutionally sever their relationship with the child. Virginia’s highest court disagreed on the legal frame they advanced.
The Afghan couple urged the justices to step in. They warned they may never see the child again and cast the fight as a test of basic fairness.
In their filing they wrote with stark urgency.
"Every so often, a case comes along requiring this court’s intervention to correct an egregious miscarriage of justice, and to uphold the basic fairness and integrity of the American rule of law."
They added a second line that left no doubt about their view of the stakes.
"This is such a case."
The Supreme Court declined to add the custody dispute to its docket. The justices issued no further public explanation in the material reported. The Virginia high court’s disposition stands.
Monday’s refusal does not revise the trial record. It leaves undisturbed Virginia’s final word on the adoption decree and on the six-month limit for challenges to final adoption orders.
The Court of Appeals had voided the adoption on a finding of misrepresented facts to the Fluvanna County court. The state high court reversed, restored the adoption, and narrowed the de facto parent path the relatives sought.
Authorities have not publicly released, in the reported record, a full Supreme Court case name or docket number tied to the denial. Investigators and courts already built a long paper trail across military coordination, local emergency custody, intermediate appellate reversal, and state high court affirmance.
What remains fixed is the procedural bottom line: the Marine and his wife keep the adoption under Virginia law as affirmed, and the nation’s highest court will not reopen that judgment on the petition presented.
Baby Doe’s full identity and her age at the time of the Supreme Court action were not stated in the reported package. The names of the Afghan couple, the uncle, and the uncle’s son and wife were not given.
The precise year of Mast’s October attorney stint was not fully specified beyond the sequence of events. The exact text of his testimony and of the emergency order was not quoted. Detailed federal charging language or dated agency quotes on the fraud claim were not included beyond the claim that custody was fraudulently obtained.
No public results were released in the reported account about medical outcomes after the child reached the United States. Passport issuance steps beyond Mast’s presentation of an Afghan passport with his last name were not described.
Those gaps do not change the court posture. They mark what officials and courts have not laid out in the public summary that accompanied the justices’ decision to stay out.
Adoption law depends on clear endpoints. Virginia’s high court treated a final order as insulated after six months and refused to expand de facto parent status beyond biological parents in this dispute.
The relatives sought a constitutional holding that no American court could sever their bond. The state high court said the doctrine they invoked did not reach them. The Supreme Court’s denial leaves that reading in force.
Courthouse News framed the justices’ move as a refusal to weigh in on whether the adoption unlawfully removed the infant from family care. With certiorari denied in practical effect by the decision not to add the case, the custody arrangement affirmed in Virginia continues.
Joshua Mast remains identified as a Virginia-based U.S. Marine Corps attorney. Stephanie Mast shares the custody granted by the state courts. Baby Doe, orphaned in a September 2019 operation and later moved through hospital care, kinship guardianship, and U.S. entry, remains the child at the center of the decree now left standing.
From Fluvanna County’s emergency order to the Court of Appeals decision in July 2024, then the Virginia high court’s reversal, the case tested how far later challengers can reach once an adoption is final. Monday’s action at the Supreme Court closed the federal appellate door they tried to open.
When state courts lock in a final adoption and the Supreme Court will not intervene, the rule of law is the timetable and the mandate that remain, not the anger of the losing petition.
