MATTHEW ROBLES/Arizona Summer Wildcat The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of anthropology professor Ronda Gillette-Netting and her twins, who were conceived through in-vitro fertilization. The eight years that she fought for her children's survivor benefits were "just a constant stress in the background of my life."

The battle against the bureaucratic and judicial maze that Rhonda Gillett-Netting has been struggling against for eight years ended with an email from her attorney containing two words: "Good news."

A link to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling on Gillett-Netting v. Barnhart followed, and the anthropology professor realized she had won.

"I got the biggest adrenaline rush," said Gillett-Netting. The court's unanimous ruling two weeks ago ordered the Social Security Administration to treat her children - who were conceived after their father died- like all other children, despite the unique circumstances of their birth.

The recognition should force Social Security - unless it appeals by the end of July - to start paying Gillett-Netting the social security survivor benefits her 7-year-old twins have been denied up until now.

In 1994, Rhonda Gillett Netting and her husband, Robert Netting, a UA anthropology professor, tried unsuccessfully to have children. After two miscarriages, Gillett-Netting got more bad news: her husband was diagnosed with cancer.

Concerned chemotherapy would render Netting sterile, the couple banked his sperm in the Health Sciences Center. They also agreed that if Netting were to die, Gillett-Netting should use his frozen sperm to have his children through in-vitro fertilization, a process that fertilizes a woman's egg cells outside of her body, later transferring the conceived embryos back to her uterus where normal development takes place.

Netting passed away in February of 1995 and ten months later, Gillett-Netting was pregnant with his children.

In 1996, Gillett-Netting applied for the social security survivor benefits she thought her newborn twins, Juliet and Piers, were entitled to.

But because her husband had died a year and a half before her children were born, and ten months before they were conceived, the Social Security Administration argued that her children did not fit Arizona's description of a child and so were ineligible for the benefits.

Describing her reaction to this news, Gillette-Netting said, "I laughed. I thought, 'this is kind of extreme,'" she said.

It was that incredulous feeling, Gillette-Netting said, that kept her filing appeals with the Social Security Administration.

"I kept going because I thought, 'this is ridiculous,'" Gillett Netting said. "I thought, 'unless we continue to push this legally they won't change their policy.'"

After a social security administrative law judge ruled against her, Gillette-Netting appealed to the U.S. District Court in Tucson.

There, Judge John Roll also concluded that her twins could not get the social security benefits because they did not meet Arizona's definition of children and could not be considered dependent on their father because they were born after he died.

Gillett-Netting said Roll's ruling surprised and angered her.

"He was essentially saying they weren't children under Arizona law," she said. "They are children. They're real. They're his (Netting's) kids and he intended for me to have them."

The three judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Gillett-Netting. In the unanimous opinion of the court, Judge Betty B. Fletcher wrote that the natural or biological child of a person is, by definition, a dependent.

That their father is deceased should not bar them from being defined as dependent either, she wrote, because other children can be dependent on their deceased parents.

All courts in the nine states that fall under the 9th Circuit Court's jurisdiction must comply with the ruling, said Hagit Elul, lead attorney on the case and legal associate for the law firm, Hughes, Hubbard and Reeves, who represented the case with the Center for Reproductive Rights.

However, because the Social Security Act is based on state law, application from state to state might vary.

Still, according to Elul, the decision might influence the dozen or so cases across the country similar to Gillett Netting's. "The construction of the act could have a nationwide impact," Elul said.

Dr. Timothy Gelety, director for the Arizona Center for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, called the ruling "very progressive."

"It's good for patients to know that society recognizes that there are laws now that protect them," he said.

The court wrote that, "developing reproductive technology has outpaced federal and state laws, which currently do not address directly the legal issues created by posthumous conception."

Elul said the problem wasn't so much the content of state and administrative laws but the lower courts' interpretation of them.

"It's a matter of applying the law with flexibility," Elul said. "Laws can be workable."

Gelety said the ruling brings laws up to date not just with technology, but also with societal changes.

"As in-vitro fertilization becomes more common, the laws have to catch up to what is becoming more acceptable in society. That's what this case is really testing," said Gelety, who said he remembers when in-vitro fertilization was deeply controversial.

"Finally the Social Security system is catching up to technology and society. They're finally being pulled into the 21st century."

Elul said Gillett-Netting's years of persistence were driven by a desire to change Social Security's discriminatory policies.

"For her this issue was not about the money, it was about the principle - she wanted her children to be treated the same as every other child," Elul said. "When she found out her children were being discriminated against because of the way they were born, she was outraged by that, as any mother would be."

Gillett-Netting said the tangible results of the ruling are also well overdue, and the benefits will help the family economically.

"Being a UA employee, we don't really get raises," Gillette-Netting said. "We live from month to month on my salary. We don't live extravagantly. If they get sick and they both have to go to the doctor, that money comes straight from the food budget."

The twins' hobbies, ballet and ice hockey, are paid for by Gillett-Netting's father, she said. "This (ruling) will allow me to support my children."

Gillett-Netting estimated she would get several hundred dollars per month per child, as well as retroactive payments from the benefits she has yet to see in the past eight years.

Gillett-Netting said she was particularly bothered by the Social Security Administration's ad hoc policy, which failed to follow precedent. In the mid-90s, a woman from Tucson in a similar position was awarded benefits for her children; however, the administration failed to rule Gillett-Netting's case the same way.

"Even though I was in the same circumstances as her and from the same city, they said they didn't have to provide the benefits because they don't follow their own precedent."

Gillett-Netting said she hopes the ruling will change that policy, but is "hesitant" to get excited before the deadline to appeal passes.

Mark Lassiter, spokesperson for the Social Security Administration, said the decision is being reviewed by the Office of the General Council. He declined commenting on whether or not the administration will appeal until the review process is over.