The ruling was appealed to the Appellate Court, Western District. OCA's Greater Seattle Chapter submitted a final copy of the brief on February 7, 2005 in Jackson, TN. The appeal was heard on February 16, and, at the time of this writing a ruling still has not been issued. It is due sometime after the beginning of April.

The He case has received national and international attention for years. Articles have appeared in several leading national newspapers, magazines and even “Good Morning America. The case has been followed internationally as well as in the U.S.

The situation began when the young couple was put into severe financial stress shortly before the birth of the daughter. They sought assistance from a local Christian charity and the county. The county, rather than providing the assistance requested steered the couple back to an adoption agency, which also offered temporary placements to families in need. They decided to give temporary custody to a local family who had volunteered to care for the child for 90 days not asking for, and literally refusing any monetary contributions from the birth parents. At the end of the period the couple was still in trouble and unable to either leave the U.S. or find a reliable person to take the child back to China where it could be cared for by relatives. The foster couple volunteered to care for the child longer.

Unbeknownst to the birth parents, the foster parents had taken a strong personal interest in the baby. They talked the birth parents into giving them guardianship of the child so that they could cover the youngster's medical needs. Getting what they wanted, they began to curtail visitation and forbade the birth parents permission to even visit with the child outside their home. The birthparents went to Juvenile Court to reverse the custody, but were challenged by the now guardians.

Following an angry confrontation, when the foster mother cut short the visit on the child's first birthday, the police were called and the birthparents were told by the police to never return. They went back to court to force the child's return. Just as the Juvenile Court was to grant their wish, the foster parents asked for, and were granted, a delay. As in most states, Tennessee law requires sets a time period at the end of which, if there has been no financial support and no visitation, a child is considered abandoned. That time period lapsed during the delay. The foster parents charged the birth parents were with abandonment in a friendly Chancery Court.

The judge was hostile to the Chinese couple from the outset and in a questionable move terminated their visitation rights without a hearing and without their benefit of counsel. Since that time the birth parents have been denied visitation. The couple filed charges against the judge who was forced to recuse himself from the case pending judicial review of his actions. Another judge in the same jurisdiction took up the case and after more than two years the case was finally heard.

After about a week of testimony and a month of deliberation the judge made his ruling known. Not in the required and normal way, but by blasting it out on the Internet and rushing a copy to the judicial review court still waiting to decide on the fate of the first judge. The ruling surprised court attendees, family law professionals and the local Chinese community as well as the parents. The judge had found them totally destitute of care for their daughter, liars, frauds and criminals not fit to raise the child. Using a vocabulary not even used by judges for murderers, the judge successfully got the charges dropped against his fellow judge.

The amicus brief filed by the chapter tasked the socio-political climate of the community, how it influenced the handling of the case and the rulings that were handed down. It provided the court with information on ethnocentrism and its manifestation as stereotyping and aggression against other peoples by the judge. It also notes the judge's refusal to consider culture in either of its findings in relationship to the motives of the birth parents or the affects of raising the child in a trans-racial family.