What happened
The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari Monday in Castro v. Guevara, while Justice Sotomayor said a Hague Convention appellate-review split “warrants this Court’s attention” even though the case was no longer fit for review.
The dispute concerned the Hague Convention’s well-settled defense, which can allow a child to remain in a new country when a return request is filed more than one year after an abduction and the child is shown to be settled in the new environment.
The case involved A.F., a child born in Venezuela. The district court found A.F. well settled in the United States and declined to order return to Venezuela, but the Fifth Circuit reversed and ordered the child returned.
Justice Sotomayor said the petition presented a narrow but important question: what standard of review an appeals court should use when reviewing a district court’s finding that a child is well settled. The Fifth Circuit treated the question as primarily legal and reviewed it de novo, a ruling the statement said deepened an entrenched split among the federal courts of appeals.
The statement said at least three circuits have applied de novo review, while two others treat well-settled findings as primarily factual and review them for clear error. Justice Sotomayor also pointed to the Supreme Court’s Monasky decision on habitual residence, saying it suggests clear-error review should apply to well-settled determinations as well.
Even so, Justice Sotomayor concurred in denying review because A.F. had returned to Venezuela in January 2026 after the court denied emergency relief. By the time the court could decide the case and any remand proceedings could unfold, she said, the well-settled analysis would look very different and could raise new concerns about disrupting the child’s life.