In a surprising move, the U.S. Supreme Court in December greenlighted a petition to hear an international family law dispute between an Italian father and an American mother who fled Italy to escape spousal abuse, triggering the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The Golan v. Saada case is only the fifth international child abduction case to come before the court since 1988. The Justices will now decide whether a court may consider protective measures allowing a child to be returned to its habitual residence despite a grave risk of physical or psychological harm. In doing so, the Supreme Court will have to reconcile the goal of deterring international child abduction while protecting individuals from domestic violence.

Petitioner Narkis Golan (the mother) resided in Italy with respondent Isacco Saada (the father) after their marriage in 2015. In 2016, a child was born in Italy. The father physically and emotionally abused the mother, creating an unsafe environment for their child. When the mother traveled home with the child for a family wedding in 2018, she received threatening calls and messages from the father and escaped to a domestic violence shelter. The mother refused to return to Italy, and the father sued for the child’s return in federal court, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.