03/01/2016 AT 05:40 PM EST
Sherri Shepherd will continue to have to pay child support to ex husband Lamar Sally for a child the former couple had via a surrogate.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to hear the former The View host’s case after an appeals court ruled that Shepherd was the boy’s legal mother, PEOPLE has confirmed.
The child, who is named L.J., was conceived using Sally’s sperm and a donor egg, so Shepherd does not have a genetic connection to the boy. In November, a Pennsylvania court of appeals upheld a lower court’s April decision that Shepherd’s name would remain on L.J’s birth certificate. The court ruled that she must continue paying child support for L.J., who is being raised by Sally and was born in August 2014 after the couple broke up.
Melissa Brisman, founder of Reproductive Possibilities, which arranged the surrogacy for Shepherd and Sally, is praising the court’s decision as a “victory for reproductive rights.”
“This ruling should give comfort to the surrogate and future parents,” she tells PEOPLE.
Last year, Sally praised the court for ruling in his favor.
“I’m glad it’s finally over,” Sally told PEOPLE in November after the appeals ruling. “I’m glad the judges saw through all the lies that she put out there, and the negative media attention. If she won’t be there for L.J. emotionally, I’ll be parent enough for the both of us.”
In August, Shepherd, 48, told PEOPLE she went through with the surrogacy despite having marital problems with Sally, because she feared her then-husband would break up with her.
“My situation was a sense of, I didn’t state what I needed and what I wanted and what I didn’t want for being scared of somebody leaving the relationship,” she said. “There are consequences to everything, but I was scared to say, ‘That’s not going to work for me. I don’t want that.’ ”
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