Does the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause permit a court to deny a child the right to adjudicate his rights under the Texas Uniform Parentage Act— which allows a child with no presumed, acknowledged, or adjudicated father to sue for parentage adjudication after the alleged father's death—because the child could not execute personal service on the deceased father?

QUESTIONS PRESENTED The Texas Uniform Parentage Act (“TUPA”) allows a child with no presumed, acknowledged, or adjudicated father to sue for parentage adjudication after the alleged father’s death. When Justin Dart turned eighteen years old, he initiated proceedings under TUPA to legally establish that Lorne Ahrens, a Dallas Police Officer slain in the line of duty two years earlier, was his biological father. Justin served the parentage petition on Katrina Ahrens, Officer Ahrens’ surviving spouse, as the executor of his estate. The trial court concluded that it had personal jurisdiction over the deceased and, after a bench trial involving uncontroverted evidence of Officer Ahrens’ parentage of Justin, entered a judgment of paternity. The Texas Court of Appeals reversed. Strictly construing a provision of TUPA requiring personal service of a parentage action on the putative father—to the exclusion of several other provisions of the statute that clearly effectuate its purpose and policy to permit posthumous parentage adjudications—it held that the trial court did not have personal jurisdiction over the deceased (and thus lacked subject matter jurisdiction) and that, accordingly, Justin could not maintain the parentage proceeding. The Texas Supreme Court denied Justin’s petitions for review and for rehearing. This Court’s intervention is necessary to resolve the following question: Does the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause permit a court to deny a child the right to adjudicate his rights under the Texas Uniform Parentage Act— which allows a child with no presumed, acknowledged, or adjudicated father to sue for parentage adjudication after the alleged father’s death—because the child could not execute personal service on the deceased father?