## Facts

- Curtis Parham was the natural father of Lemuel Parham, a child born out of wedlock.
- Lemuel and his mother were killed in an automobile accident involving Ellis Franklin Hughes.
- Parham had never married the mother and had not legitimated Lemuel under Georgia law, though legitimation was available by unilateral action of the father.
- Parham sued Hughes under Georgia’s wrongful death statute for the “full value of the life” of his child.
- Georgia courts construed the statute to permit a mother to sue for the wrongful death of an illegitimate child, but to permit a father to sue only if he had legitimated the child (and if there was no mother).
- The trial court denied Hughes’s motion for summary judgment and held the statute violated due process and equal protection.
- The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed, upholding the statute as rationally related to legitimate state interests.

## Issues

1. Whether Georgia’s denial of a wrongful death action to a natural father who had not legitimated his illegitimate child violates the Equal Protection Clause.
2. Whether conditioning a father’s access to the wrongful death remedy on prior legitimation violates the Due Process Clause.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed.
- The Court upheld the statute under rational-basis review.
- The Court found no unconstitutional discrimination against illegitimate children because the statute regulated which parent may sue, not benefits or burdens assigned to children based on legitimacy.
- The Court rejected the claim that the statute imposed an invidious sex classification, reasoning that the differential treatment was linked to the legal reality that only the father could legitimate by unilateral act.
- The Court held the statute rationally addressed difficulties of proving paternity after an illegitimate child’s death and furthered orderly administration of related proceedings.
- The Court found no due process violation because wrongful death actions are statutory creations and the State may define eligibility conditions so long as classifications are not irrational or invidious.

## Legal Principles

- A statutory classification is upheld if it is not invidiously discriminatory and is rationally related to legitimate governmental purposes.
- Prior illegitimacy-equal-protection decisions targeting burdens imposed on children do not control where the statute regulates parental standing rather than penalizing children for their birth status.
- Differential treatment of mothers and fathers may be permissible where it reflects legally relevant differences (including paternity proof concerns and available legal mechanisms to establish paternal status), rather than overbroad gender generalizations.
- Wrongful death remedies are matters of state law; a State may condition access to the cause of action on preexisting legal status (such as legitimation) consistent with equal protection and due process.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Georgia could condition a natural father’s standing to sue for the wrongful death of an illegitimate child on prior legitimation, because the limitation rationally furthered legitimate interests in reliable paternity determination and administration of the statutory remedy, and it did not violate equal protection or due process.


Parham v. Hughes, 441 U.S. 347 (1979)