Virginia Supreme Court upholds Marine's adoption of Afghan child in divided 4-3 ruling

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a U.S. Marine and his wife will keep the Afghan child they adopted, reversing two lower courts that had found the adoption void. The 4-3 decision likely ends a years-long legal battle that stretched from a battlefield in Afghanistan to a courtroom in rural Virginia — and raised hard questions about how an American couple secured a foreign child through a county circuit court while that child was 7,000 miles away.

Joshua Mast, a Marine, and his wife Stephanie were granted a final adoption in December 2020 by Fluvanna County Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore. The child's parents and siblings had been killed during a U.S. military raid on a rural Afghan compound in September 2019. What followed was a custody fight that entangled the State Department, the Afghan government, and ultimately the highest court in Virginia.

How a Virginia court adopted a child from Afghanistan

After the child was injured in the 2019 raid, the State Department — under Trump's first administration — insisted the U.S. was obligated under international law to work with the Afghan government and the International Committee of the Red Cross to reunite the girl with her closest surviving relatives. The Afghan government determined the child was Afghan and vetted a man who claimed to be her uncle. The U.S. government agreed, and the uncle gave her to his son and the son's new wife, who raised her for 18 months.

Meanwhile, Mast claimed the child was the "stateless" daughter of foreign fighters. He and his wife convinced Fluvanna County courts to grant custody and a series of adoption orders — culminating in a final adoption in December 2020 — while the child remained on the other side of the world. The Afghan family had no idea a Virginia judge was giving their girl to another family, as NBC News reports.

When the Taliban took over in 2021, Mast worked his military contacts to get the Afghan family on an evacuation flight. Once they arrived in Virginia, he took the child from them at a refugee resettlement center. The Afghan couple has not seen her since.

The majority's reasoning

The four-justice majority — Justices Kelsey, McCullough, Chafin, and Russell — didn't rule that the adoption process was clean. They ruled it was too late to challenge it. Virginia law imposes a six-month statute of limitations on contesting adoption orders. That clock expired around June 2021 — while the child was still in Afghanistan and the Afghan family still didn't know the adoption existed.

The majority held that this bar applied even if the adoption was obtained by fraud.

On the substance, the majority cited Judge Moore's findings and dismissed the Afghan couple's parental claim:

"We find no legal merit" in the argument "that they were 'de facto' parents of the child and that no American court could constitutionally sever that relationship."

Moore — who presided over a dozen hearings and authored a 38-page document — concluded that the Afghan couple "are not and never were parents" of the child because they had no Afghan court order and had not proven any biological relationship. The Afghan couple had refused DNA testing, saying it could not reliably prove a connection between opposite-gender half-cousins.

A blistering dissent

Three justices disagreed — and they didn't mince words.

Justice Thomas P. Mann, joined by Chief Justice Cleo E. Powell and Justice LeRoy F. Millette Jr., described the adoption process as "wrong," "cancerous," and "like a house built on a rotten foundation." His opening salvo landed hard:

"A dispassionate review of this case reveals a scenario suffused with arrogance and privilege. Worse, it appears to have worked."

Mann zeroed in on what adoption is supposed to mean under the law:

"We must recognize what an adoption really is: the severance and termination of the rights naturally flowing to an otherwise legitimate claimant to parental authority. Of course, the process must be impeccable. An evolved society could not sanction anything less than that. And here, it was less."

He described the Masts' approach to procedure in terms that read as a direct accusation:

"If this process was represented by a straight line, (the Masts) went above it, under it, around it, and then blasted right through it until there was no line at all — just fragments collapsing into a cavity."

The federal government's shifting posture

During Trump's first term, the State Department sided firmly against the Masts. Government filings warned that allowing the adoption to stand could be viewed as "endorsing an act of international child abduction," threaten international security pacts, and serve as propaganda for Islamic extremists — potentially endangering U.S. soldiers overseas.

Under Trump's second administration, the Justice Department reversed course. It had been granted permission to argue before the Virginia Supreme Court but withdrew on the morning of oral arguments, stating only that the department "has now had an opportunity to reevaluate its position in this case." No further explanation was offered.

Process matters — even when the cause is sympathetic

This story doesn't fit neatly into ideological boxes, and conservatives shouldn't pretend it does.

There's a version where a Marine saw a child orphaned on a battlefield and did whatever it took to give her a life in America. That impulse is noble. The desire to rescue a child from a war zone — from the chaos that followed the Taliban's return — is something most Americans understand viscerally.

But conservatives are supposed to care about process. About the rule of law applying equally. About courts functioning as institutions, not instruments of individual will. A Virginia county court granted an adoption of a child in Afghanistan, without the knowledge or participation of the people raising her. A statute of limitations expired while the child was on a different continent and the Afghan family had no idea proceedings existed. The majority's ruling means the clock ran against people who had no practical ability to challenge it.

The dissent's language was harsh, but its underlying concern is one conservatives usually champion: legal processes must be followed even when — especially when — the people invoking them have good intentions and powerful connections. A Marine working military contacts to get a family onto an evacuation flight so he could take their child at a resettlement center is not how adoption is supposed to work in any system conservatives would want to defend.

None of this requires questioning the Masts' love for this child. It does require asking whether a 4-3 ruling that hinges on a statute of limitations expiring while the opposing party was in a war zone constitutes justice — or just finality.

The Virginia Supreme Court has spoken. Three of its justices said plainly that what worked here should never have been allowed to. Sometimes the law settles a case without settling the question.