Supreme Court preserves law that keeps Native American children with tribal families

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the system favoring Native American families in foster care and adoption procedures of Native children, rejecting a wide-ranging attack from Republican-led states and white families who claimed it was based on race.

Judges upheld the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted to address concerns that Indigenous children were being separated from their families and too often placed in non-Indigenous homes.

Tribal leaders have supported the law as a means to preserve their families, traditions and cultures.

The “issues are complicated,” Judge Amy Coney Barrett wrote for a seven-judge majority, but the bottom line is that we reject all challenges from statute petitioners.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito disagreed, with Alito writing that the decision “harms the rights and best interests of these children.”

The “issues are complicated,” Judge Amy Coney Barrett wrote before a seven-judge majority, but the bottom line is that we reject all challenges from statute petitioners.

President Joe Biden welcomed the decision, which he said protected a law created to end “unspeakable cruelty.”

“Our nation’s painful history looms over today’s decision,” he said. “In the not-so-distant past, native children were stolen from the arms of the people who loved them.

“They were sent to boarding schools or raised by non-Indian families – all for the purpose of erasing who they are as indigenous people and tribal citizens.”

Congress passed the law in response to the alarming rate at which Native American and Alaska Native children were being removed from their homes by public and private agencies.

The law requires states to notify tribes and seek placement with the child’s extended family, members of the child’s tribe, or other Native American families.

Three white families, the state of Texas and a small number of other states argue that the law is based on race and is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. They also argue that it puts tribal interests before children and unfairly gives the federal government too much power over adoptions and placements in foster homes, areas typically controlled by the state.

The lead plaintiffs in the case — Chad and Jennifer Brackeen of Fort Worth, Texas — adopted a Native American child after a lengthy legal battle with the Navajo Nation, one of the two largest Native American tribes based in the Southwest.

The Brackeens try to adopt the boy’s half-sister, now 4, who has lived with them since childhood. The Navajo Nation has opposed that adoption.

President Joe Biden welcomed the decision, which he said protected a law created to end “unspeakable cruelty”

More than three-quarters of the country’s 574 federally recognized tribes and nearly two dozen attorneys general from across the political spectrum had called on the Supreme Court to uphold the law.

All children ever involved in the current case are or could be enrolled as Navajo, Cherokee, White Earth Band of Ojibwe and Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. Some adoptions have been completed, while some are still being challenged.

The Supreme Court had heard cases on India’s child welfare law twice before, in 1989 and in 2013, which have sparked enormous emotions.

Before the Indian Child Welfare Act was enacted, between 25% and 35% of Indian children were removed from their homes and placed with adoptive families, foster homes or institutions.

Most were placed with white families or boarding schools in an attempt to assimilate them.

Tribal leaders celebrated the result.

In a joint statement, the leaders of the Cherokee Nation, Morongo Band of Mission Indians, Oneida Nation and Quinault Indian Nation said: “We hope that this decision will end the political attacks aimed at diminishing the sovereignty of the strains and creating instability throughout Indian law. that have lasted too long.’