The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in two decisions on Friday that Kansas state law will recognize same-sex couples as parents when they have a child together. The court held that under the Kansas Parentage Act (KPA), a woman may establish parental rights by acknowledging maternity at the time of the child’s birth.

The cases, In re M.F. and In re W.L., were both filed by women whose same-sex partners had conceived through artificial insemination. The women sought to establish parentage after their relationships with their former partners had fallen apart. In both cases, the women had not married, and they did not have written or oral co-parenting agreements. Lower courts ruled in both cases that the women had no parental rights. Both women appealed the lower courts’ decisions to the Kansas Supreme Court.

In reversing the lower courts’ decisions, the state Supreme Court held that a woman seeking to establish parenthood “need not show the existence of a written or oral coparenting agreement between her and the birth mother.” Instead, “[s]he need only show she has notoriously recognized maternity and the rights and duties attendant to it at the time of the child’s birth.” The court also stated that there must be evidence that “the birth mother, at the time of the child’s birth, consented to share her due process right to decision-making about her child’s care, custody, and control with the woman who is claiming parentage.”

The court recognized in its ruling that the KPA supports the idea that a non-biological parent may be treated in law as the biological parent. The court noted that “[s]hifting parenthood based on actual biology alone could be detrimental to the emotional and physical wellbeing of any child.” The court emphasized that it is at the moment of birth when state law deems a child to have either one parent or two. Therefore, the court said, “a demand that each individual have made up her mind as of the time of the baby’s arrival incentivizes stability for that child.”

Judge Caleb Stegall dissented from the opinions, writing that the majority’s ruling suggests that a woman’s legal status as a parent can be established by “mere declaration” and a “showing of implicit proof by circumstantial evidence.”