In the case of Moore et al. v. Sims et ux., 1978, the United States Supreme Court addressed a dispute over child custody and parental rights in Texas. The plaintiffs were parents who had their children removed from their home by state officials due to allegations of abuse without prior notice or hearing, which they argued violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights to procedural due process. However, the court ruled in favor of the defendants (the state officials), asserting that federal courts should abstain from intervening in ongoing state proceedings involving important state interests unless there are extraordinary circumstances present - a doctrine known as Younger abstention named after an earlier case, Younger v Harris (1971). In this particular situation, it was determined that no such extraordinary circumstances existed and therefore upheld Texas's procedures for removing potentially abused children from homes.

In the dissenting opinion for Moore et al. v. Sims et ux., Justice William Rehnquist argued that the majority's decision to abstain from ruling on a constitutional issue was inappropriate and inconsistent with previous court decisions. He contended that federal courts have an obligation to decide cases properly before them, even if they involve sensitive state issues such as child custody laws in this case. Furthermore, he disagreed with the majority's assertion that there were ongoing state proceedings which warranted abstention by federal courts; instead, he pointed out that no such proceedings existed at the time of filing or during litigation in District Court. Therefore, according to him, it was incorrect for lower federal courts and Supreme Court itself not to exercise their jurisdiction over this matter.