Lewis & Clark Law Alumni Advance Parentage Law Through Senate Bill 163

Lewis & Clark Law graduates Robin Pope ’81 and Lane Shetterly ’81 recently played instrumental roles in the passage of Oregon Senate Bill 163, addressing how parentage is legally established in the state of Oregon. Among other things, this bill expands who can be recognized as a legal parent, updates court procedures for determining legal parentage, creates a registry for gamete and embryo donors, and provides funding to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to maintain these records systems.

Following their attendance at Lewis & Clark Law together, Robin and Lane continued to cross paths in their professional careers. Lane, who serves as an Oregon commissioner on the Uniform Law Commission that promulgated the Uniform Parentage Act, chaired the workgroup that developed this bill. Lane reached out to Robin to join the team, and she “jumped at the chance.” Comprised of a number of stakeholders, including state agency representatives and their DOJ counsel, as well as private practitioners, the workgroup functioned in a “highly collaborative process” for three years leading up to the passage of this bill. “Lane is an awesome workgroup leader,” Robin commented, “He was quite good about giving us time to think about issues, talk them over, then reach consensus on what we wanted to support.”

With a common goal of wanting to modernize and improve Oregon’s parentage laws, the members of this team called on their extensive experience in the field. Robin has focused her career on adoptions, family law, and, most recently, Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). In her statement supporting the passage of this bill, she drew on this professional experience as well as on personal testimony to emphasize the importance of the issues at question. Lane furthered this point, testifying in his role with the Uniform Law Commission as to how the passage of the bill would adapt the Uniform Parentage Act to address the needs of Oregonians in relation to legal parentage.

Now, reflecting on the work that was done to introduce and ultimately pass this bill, Lane and Robin agreed it was the highlight of their 44+ years as Oregon attorneys.