Fathers and Families, a Boston-based fathers’ rights group, has lost its legal challenge against Massachusetts child support guidelines enacted in 2009, the Boston Globe reports. The Supreme Judicial Court unanimously upheld Massachusetts’ existing child support laws.

The organization argued that the state’s rules were enacted unlawfully, are unfair to fathers and may cause harm to parents making support payments.

The lawyer representing Fathers and Families told the court that the new guidelines were approved in a manner that was illegal and unconstitutional, because a judiciary made the final decision, not the legislature. However, the attorney representing the judge and the state’s court system explained that the legislature gave the power to amend child support guidelines to the top administrative judge in 1986.

Still, the advocacy group stated that it believes parents can end up paying excessive child support for children from a first marriage, leaving the spawn of subsequent marriages without basic needs due to lack of funds.

According to the Boston Herald, Fathers and Families has not given up the fight.

“We’re in this for the long haul,” Ned Holstein, founder and chairman of the organization told the publication. “The family courts have been hurting children’s lives for several decades.”

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