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False claim new dads signing for birth certificates must take DNA tests first | Fact check

Joedy McCreary   Paste BN

The claim: New state laws require a father to submit a DNA test before he can sign a child’s birth certificate

An Aug. 30 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) claims that men in one state now have an additional task to complete once a baby is born.

“New Florida law! A father’s (sic) must submit a DNA test before signing the birth certificates. Ladies beware,” the post reads.

It was shared more than 1,000 times in eight days. 

Other posts contained nearly identical claims about laws in other states. A post with a claim about Ohio (direct link, archive link) also received more than 1,000 shares in eight days. An Instagram post about Tennessee (direct link, archive link) received more than 3,000 likes in six days.

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Our rating: False

The claims are not true, family law experts say. None of the states mentioned have laws that require DNA tests from fathers before their names appear on birth certificates.

Expert: States have interest in making it easier, not harder, to establish paternity

There are no laws – new or old – in any of those states that mandate DNA testing before a father's name appears on a birth certificate, multiple family law experts said. No bills establishing genetic testing as a prerequisite were even put forth by lawmakers this year in any of those states, according to searches of the legislative tracking website LegiScan.

Fact check: False claim that Texas is distributing DNA kits to identify victims of mass shootings

No laws in Ohio or Florida require a father to submit a test, Katherine Hunt Federle, a law professor at Ohio State University, said in an email to Paste BN.

A bill introduced in Tennessee in 2022 would have required those tests for unmarried fathers before the state could validate a birth certificate, Jenny Diamond Cheng, a lecturer in law at Vanderbilt University’s law school, told Paste BN. That bill died in committee, legislative records show.

In general, states have strong public policy reasons to make establishing paternity easier and disavowing it more difficult, Cheng said.

Elizabeth Katz, a law professor at the University of Florida and a visiting professor of law at Harvard, said it would be “surprising” for a state to require DNA tests.

“The state has an interest in facilitating relationships that provide financial and other support for children,” Katz said in an email to Paste BN.

For married people, most states recognize the concept of marital presumption, which presumes that a child born to a married woman is the biological child of her husband, according to the American Bar Association.

But for those who are not married, things can be more complicated.

When an unmarried woman gives birth, states commonly allow the assumed father to sign an acknowledgment of paternity that allows him to assume the rights and responsibilities of parenthood, Katz said. Paternity also may be established through the court system, and genetic testing may be part of that process, she said.

But none of those states have anything in place requiring such testing before a birth certificate is issued.

Under the Tennessee bill, an unwed father could have voluntarily signed to acknowledge paternity, but the birth certificate would not have been “officially validated” until the Tennessee Office of Vital Records had received those results, Democratic Rep. Antonio Parkinson, the bill's sponsor, wrote in an opinion piece in The Tennessean in March 2022.

Paste BN reached out to Parkinson but did not immediately receive a response.

Paste BN also reached out to four users who shared the post. Two of them responded but provided no evidence to back up the claim. Paste BN did not immediately receive responses from the others.

Lead Stories and PolitiFact also debunked versions of the claim.

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