Golan v. Saada
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that judges handling international child abduction cases are not required to consider every conceivable safety precaution before deciding to keep a child in the United States, even after finding the child would face serious harm abroad.
The decision rejects a Second Circuit rule that effectively required courts to maximize the chances of return regardless of danger, giving judges meaningful discretion to prioritize a child's safety when the Hague Convention's grave-risk exception applies.
“The Convention does not pursue return exclusively or at all costs.”
The majority rejecting the idea that courts must always prioritize returning a child over the child's safety.
How it got here: A federal trial court twice ordered the child returned to Italy; the Second Circuit vacated once and then affirmed; the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case to resolve a split among federal appeals courts.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A U.S. citizen married an Italian man and they had a son together in Italy. After years of documented physical and psychological abuse — much of it witnessed by the child — the mother brought her son to the United States and refused to return. The father filed a petition under the international Hague Convention demanding the child be returned to Italy. A trial court found the child would face serious harm if returned, yet still ordered his return after exploring safety conditions the court said could reduce that risk.
The question before the Court
When a court finds a child would face serious harm if returned to the country they were taken from, must the court first explore every possible safety measure before it can refuse to order the child's return?
The Court's answer
No — courts are not required to consider every possible safety measure before refusing to return a child under the Hague Convention once they have found a grave risk of harm. The Convention's text gives courts discretion after making a grave-risk finding, but nowhere mentions "ameliorative measures" or commands an exhaustive search for them. The U.S. law that implements the Convention is equally silent on the point. The Second Circuit's rule imposing that categorical requirement was therefore an addition to the treaty, not an interpretation of it.
That said, courts are not free to ignore safety measures entirely. When the parties raise them, or when obvious possibilities arise from the facts, courts should address them. But courts may reasonably decline to consider measures that were never proposed by anyone, would be unworkable, would intrude on the foreign court's role in deciding the permanent custody arrangement, or would cause undue delay — and the Convention expects these cases to be resolved quickly, not drawn out over nine months.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Parents fleeing domestic violence with children to the United States will no longer face a rule that forces courts to spend months — in this case nine — hunting for safety conditions before refusing to send a child back to a dangerous situation. Courts can now weigh a child's safety more directly, without being required to exhaust every possible protective measure first.
What changes now
The case goes back to the federal trial court in New York, which must now decide — using the correct legal standard — whether to order the child returned to Italy or deny return. The court has extensive factual findings already on record and is instructed to move as quickly as possible. The child's safety is to be treated as the Convention's primary goal in that assessment.
What this does not decide
This ruling does not decide what happens to this specific child — that determination is for the trial court on remand. The Court also does not prohibit courts from considering safety measures; it only holds they are not required to do so before denying return.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court started with the treaty's text. Article 13(b) of the Hague Convention says courts are 'not bound' to order return when return would expose a child to a grave risk of harm — language that grants discretion to grant or deny return, but says nothing about first examining safety precautions. Neither the Convention nor the U.S. implementing statute, ICARA, mentions 'ameliorative measures' at all.
- Because the text imposed no categorical requirement, the Second Circuit's rule — mandating that courts independently explore the full range of possible safety conditions before denying return — was an addition invented outside the treaty. Quoting an earlier ruling, the Court said such a rule 'in practice, rewrite[s] the treaty' by inserting an obligation that the drafters chose not to include.
- While courts have discretion to consider safety measures, that discretion is guided by the Convention's own objectives — not just the goal of returning children. The Convention does not pursue return 'exclusively or at all costs.' Three Convention requirements constrain how courts should exercise that discretion.
- First, child safety is the paramount concern: when a risk is so severe or so obvious — as with sexual abuse or persistent domestic violence — that no safety condition could realistically fix it, a court may decline to consider such measures at all. Second, courts must not use safety conditions to decide permanent custody arrangements; that role belongs to the foreign court once the child is returned.
- Third, the Convention demands speedy resolution — typically within six weeks — and courts must not let an open-ended search for safety conditions cause undue delay. A court may therefore reasonably skip or limit that inquiry when it would prolong proceedings without realistic benefit.
- Because the trial court found grave risk but never exercised genuine discretion under the correct standard — it was required by circuit precedent to order return if possible — the case is sent back so the trial court can weigh whether the identified safety measures are adequate given its own factual findings, keeping the child's safety as the primary goal.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Lozano v. Montoya Alvarez (572 U. S. 1)
Reaffirmed for the principle that lower court rules that effectively rewrite a treaty exceed judicial authority.
Distinguishes Monasky v. Taglieri (589 U. S. ___)
Distinguished to explain why remand is appropriate here, where the trial court never applied the correct discretionary standard.