Native Americans adopting Native Americans - SCOTUS ruling
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The ruling says the law that gives preference to Native Americans in the adoption process does not discriminate on the basis of race.
The majority, did however, conclude that the Congress has the authority to legislate on the issue and rejected challenges on those grounds.
It's a 7-2 ruling, with Thomas and Alito dissenting.
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It's more than just adoption.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1669358322032738305.html
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On Haaland v Brackeen, this morning's big SCOTUS case on Indian law: This was a complicated case, both factually and legally, and it ends with a muddled and unfortunate decision. As Justice Barrett painstakingly explains in her majority opinion...
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the Indian Child Welfare Act “requires a state court to place an Indian child with an Indian caretaker . . . even if the child is already living with a non-Indian family and the state court thinks it in the child’s best interest to stay there.”
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The three custody disputes at the heart of Brackeen, as well as a brief that I filed at the cert stage of this case, illustrate the too-frequently-sad consequences of that law. @CatoInstitute @TPPF @GoldwaterInst @TimothySandefur
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-10/41455-pdf-Schlott.pdf
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It’s a close call whether Cong, in exercising its const power over Indian affairs, can intrude on state family law, requiring, as Gorsuch concurs, “a bird’s-eye view of how our founding document mediates between competing federal, state, and tribal claims of sovereignty.”
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And it may well be that the plaintiffs here sued the wrong defendants: federal officials rather than the state agencies that enforce ICWA’s placement preferences. But that doesn’t resolve what Kavanaugh concurs separately to recognize as a “serious” equal-protection issue...
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whereby “a child in foster care or adoption proceedings may in some cases be denied a particular placement because of the child’s race.” If the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact, it also shouldn’t be the facilitator of race-based custody proceedings involving US-citizen kids..
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who may never have set foot on Indian lands, merely because the children happen to have some quantum of Native American blood.
PS - Kavanaugh's short concurrence is a favorable sign regarding the challenges to racial preferences in college admissions.
Skim the attached PDF. It basically argues that the "best interest" of the child is secondary to the child's racial heritage. If a mother leaves an abusive marriage to a Native American, a non-native new husband is not permitted to adopt the child.
Another example:
Consider In re Alexandria P., supra. It involved a six-year-old girl called Lexi, who lived with a California foster family for four of those years. Although she had no political, social, cultural, linguistic, religious, or other relationship with the Choctaw tribe, her great-great- great-great-great-great-great grandfather had been a full-blood member of the tribe, and because the tribe has no minimum blood quantum requirement, that rendered her eligible for membership—and conse- quently made her an “Indian child.” Therefore, tribal officials demanded that she be removed from the foster parents she called “Mommy” and “Daddy,” and sent to live in Oklahoma with her step-second cousin. State courts obliged. The trauma inflicted on Lexi was certainly incalculable.
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I dont know if that is much different than a lot of custody/child abuse cases in the US. My understanding from a friend who works with the juvenile court system is that the main goal is almost always reunification with the natural mother and/or father, if they can demonstrate they are able to care for them even if the kids are obviously in a much better situation with a foster family for example.
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I understand that, however, the case I cited was not about mother/father. It was a child who was taken to a step-second cousin. I don't even know what that is.
There are more in the PDF.
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I understand that, however, the case I cited was not about mother/father. It was a child who was taken to a step-second cousin. I don't even know what that is.
There are more in the PDF.
@George-K Ah okay. (I do not agree with the general thought that reunification with natural mother/father is the best however or always in the best interest of the child)
