Beyond the tangle of legal matters, the Supreme Court case delves into the evocative terrain of historical trauma, race, identity, cultural biases — and the very meaning of family.
Read the full article at Searchlight New Mexico.
The Supreme Court is about to decide on a case arguing that the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, discriminates against white people. The lawsuit seeks to reframe tribal membership as a racial rather than a political category, and argues that it disadvantages white foster parents trying to adopt Native children. This week, Rebecca Nagle, host of the This Land podcast, explains how this decision could reverse centuries of U.S. law and precedent protecting the rights of Indigenous nations.
Listen to the podcast at Code Switch.
The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 sought to keep Native children in tribal communities. The Supreme Court may change that this spring.
Read the full article at the New York Times.
Congresswoman Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, and other House Democrats say they’re worried the U.S. Supreme Court is about to weaken the Indian Child Welfare Act, to the detriment of Native children and their tribes.
Read the full article at Alaska Public Media.
“If the court rules the law unconstitutional, it will not only prevent family reunifications like my own — it will tell tribes that we do not have a right to our own children, and that our political sovereignty, which Congress has recognized for centuries is no more. For all of us, this should be a terrifying notion,” she wrote.
Read the full article at The Washington Times.
Let me be clear, this law is not about preventing non-Native families from adopting children when the situation and best interests of the child call for it. It’s about keeping families together whenever possible; it’s about fighting for the futures of Native American children; and it’s about giving tribes a long-awaited seat at the table. It not only upholds Oneida’s vision of protecting families and preserving our core values and traditional beliefs – it has promoted the best interest of Oneida children for more than 40 years.
Read the full article at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Janine Jackson interviewed Crushing Colonialism’s Jen Deerinwater about efforts to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act for the December 9, 2022, episode of CounterSpin.
Read the transcript or listen to the interview at FAIR.org.
The Supreme Court will decide a case that affects Native children and their adoptive families. Although both sides claim to have children’s best interest at heart, removing kids from Native communities has a troubled history in America.
Read the full article at Harper’s Bazaar.
Indigenous affairs reporter Miles Brady talked with Koston Lathoris, a Las Vegas lawyer and citizen of the Southern Paiute tribe, about the case.
Listen to the full story at Nevada Public Radio.
Each side presented their oral arguments Wednesday to the U.S. Supreme Court for the most serious challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act in recent memory. The decision in Haaland v. Brackeen will be a major force in the future of ICWA and the scope of tribal sovereignty. Today on Native America Calling, Shawn Spruce analyzes the legal debate from a Native perspective with Matthew Fletcher (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians), law professor at the University of Michigan Law School and author of the Turtle Talk blog; independent journalist Suzette Brewer (citizen of the Cherokee Nation); and Dr. Sarah Kastelic (Alutiiq), director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association.
Listen to the conversation at Native America Calling.
The Supreme Court appeared likely Wednesday to leave in place most of a federal law that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings of Native children.
Read the full article at Indian Country Today.
And because Native children represent about 55% of all children in state custody, Chen says overturning ICWA would have huge implications for Alaska. At the same time, Native people only make up a little over 20% of the population, so there’s a disparity, she says, and a feeling that the state hasn’t done enough to implement ICWA to begin with.
Listen to the full story at Alaska Public Media.
The law, known as ICWA, includes many other provisions that impact Native families across Indian Country. What ICWA will look like following the Supreme Court’s decision depends on how the justices rule. Amicus curiae briefs filed in the case cover arguments made for and against the law.
Read the full article at Native News Online.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed conflicted Wednesday, as the justices heard arguments challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act, known by the acronym “ICWA.”
Listen to the full story at NPR.
The Court is hearing a case that challenges the legality of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which prioritizes the placement of Native American children in foster care or adoption with relatives, other tribal members, or in other Native homes.
Read the full article at Time.
Brackeen v. Haaland attacks a 44-year-old law enacted to halt cultural genocide.
Read the full article at Vox.
The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed to redress years of mass separations of Native families. This month, the court hears a case that could overturn it
Read the full article at The Guardian.
Every Native child deserves the deep sense of safety that comes with being cared for in a home that shares their culture.
Read the full article at romper.
In the sprawling federal lawsuit Haaland v. Brackeen, a handful of white foster parents, among other plaintiffs, are asking the Supreme Court to overturn a law called the Indian Child Welfare Act. ICWA was created in 1978 to prevent family separation in Native communities. When the law passed, about a third of Native children had been removed from their families. But in the lawsuit, far more than the future of Native children is at stake.
Read the full article at The Atlantic.
The Indian Child Welfare Act set out to fix generations of harm to Native kids. The Supreme Court could soon toss it aside.
Read the full article at the Mother Jones website.
There’s a central question at the core of every child welfare case: What is the best interest of the child? When it comes to Native adoptions, the fate of the law that set the standard for four decades now rests with the Supreme Court.
Read the full article at the Christian Science Monitor website.
The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case that pits several prospective adoptive parents and the state of Texas against the Indian Child Welfare Act — a federal law aimed at preventing Native American children from being separated from their extended families and their tribes.
Listen to the full story at the NPR website.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Brackeen v. Haaland, a case engineered to hobble the federal government’s power to protect Native communities from exploitation. The plaintiffs are asking the justices to invalidate the 44-year-old Indian Child Welfare Act, which prioritizes the placement of Native children in custody proceedings with Native families. But they’re also contesting a constitutional foundation of Indian law itself. Allying with Republican legal groups and lawmakers, the plaintiffs want to kneecap congressional authority to regulate tribes for the benefit of their own members.
Read the full article at Slate.
The issue is whether a federal law that seeks to place Native American foster children in Native American homes is constitutional. The case could turn on whether the justices see tribes as racial groups or sovereign nations.
Read the full article at the New York Time website.
The case has enormous implications for Indian Country, its children and the ongoing existence of tribal sovereignty, said Sarah Deer, professor at the University of Kansas and chief justice for the Prairie Island Indian Community.
Read the full article at the Indian Country Today website.
The Imprint walks readers through highlights of the Brackeen v. Haaland case
Read the full article at The Imprint.
California’s Morongo Band of Mission Indians is one of five tribes that have intervened in the Brackeen v. Haaland case, scheduled for oral arguments Nov. 9. The tribesspoke out this week alongside leaders of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, the Quinault Indian Nation of Washington, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the Navajo Nation.
Read the full article at The Imprint website.
Kendra Lowden, a Citizen Potawatomi Nation member, discussed the case as well as the Indian Child Welfare Act and the impact its repeal could have on tribes and children across the country.
Listen to the full podcase at Potawatomi.org.
“We will not go back to a time when our children were stolen from our communities without cause.”
Read the full article at The Imprint.
Matthew Fletcher, Harry Burns Hutchins Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan, and Rebecca Nagle, Creator and Host, “This Land” Podcast, discuss the case before the Supreme Court.
Listen at the Ideastream Public Media website.
Kendra Lowden is a Citizen Potawatomi Nation member and Curly family descendant. She works as the Senior Program Associate at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work. She is the owner of Ghost Thunder Child Welfare Consulting and previously served as the Board President of the Oklahoma Indian Child Welfare Association. Kendra discussed the case with us as well as the Indian Child Welfare Act and the impact its repeal could have on tribes and children across the country.
Listen to the podcast at the Potawatomi.org website.
Brackeen v. Haaland is a case centering around the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), which focuses on assimilation, tribal culture and the adoption of Native children. Across the country, tribes are watching this case unfold to see how it will impact tribal sovereignty and the relationship between tribes and the federal government.
Read the full article at SiouxlandProud.com.
On Nov. 9, the eyes of Indian Country will once again turn toward the nation’s capital, where the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a law passed in 1978 that enshrines tribal governments’ right to oversee foster care placements in cases involving Native children.
Read the full article at the High Country News website.
Read the full article at the Navajo-Hopi Observer website.
Today, five tribes filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Brackeen v. Haaland defending the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).
Read the full article at Indian Country Today.
Read the full article in The Desert Sun.
For the last 44 years, a federal law called the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) has sought to prevent these situations by prioritizing that Native children adoptees be placed, when possible, with Native relatives or other members within the child’s tribe.
But after months of consequential rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing majority, four cases teed up for hearings by the court this fall are prompting worries that ICWA, too, could be toppled or drastically altered.
Read the full article in Michigan Advance.
The case centers on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which was designed to protect American Indian communities against state-led efforts to break up Native families. The challengers in the case—several Republican-led states and non-Native families seeking to adopt Native children—are attempting to invalidate ICWA’s restrictions on breaking up Native families and on non-Native families adopting Native children. In doing so, they risk undoing a set of doctrines that has facilitated tribes’ ability to govern themselves and prosecute individuals who victimize Native people.
Read the full article at The Atlantic website.
The amicus brief urges the Fifth Circuit to uphold the court’s previous decision affirming the constitutionality of IWCA. The decision the Fifth Circuit issued in August reversed an unprecedented ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas which wrongly struck down ICWA as unconstitutional.
Read the full press release and view the amicus brief at the United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs website.
Get ready for round two. Oral arguments in a closely-watched Indian Child Welfare Act case will take place on January 22, 2020.
After offering a tentative date last month, 5th Circuit Court of Appeals made it official on Wednesday. The case known as Brackeen v. Bernhardt will go before an en banc panel of judges in New Orleans, Louisiana, where the first round of arguments took place earlier this year.
Read the full article at the Indianz.com website.
The legal status of the Indian Child Welfare Act is again going before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2018, a Texas federal court found the Act known as ICWA to be unconstitutional.
But this summer a panel of three Fifth Circuit judges reversed that finding. Now the full panel of appellate judges will hear the case, with oral arguments tentatively scheduled for the week of Jan. 20.
Listen to the full story at the South Dakota Public Broadcasting website.
Attacks on the law, enacted in 1978, have inexplicably risen in the past seven years and attracted the support of a seemingly disparate array of high power ultra conservative players and organizations.
Today’s challenges to the child welfare protocols aren’t only about adoption because if the Indian Child Welfare Act is found to be unconstitutional that would undermine tribal governments. So much is at stake: The authority of tribal courts, economic nationhood, including casinos, and the control of tribal land, potentially an opening for fossil fuels and other extractive industry development.
Read the full article at the Indian Country Today website.
Native American tribes got a big win in August when a federal court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act, a pivotal 1978 law that requires states to prioritize placing Native children in foster or adoptive homes with Native families over non-Native families.
But the decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is now being reconsidered by the full court, which announced earlier this month that it is granting a rehearing in a case known as Brackeen v. Bernhardt.
Read the full article at The Huffington Post website.
In the 40 years since Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act, the law has been criticized in legal challenges that have climbed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the ICWA, as the act is known, has always prevailed.
Now its constitutionality is being questioned again. On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed to rehear a lawsuit filed by a non-Native American couple in Texas claiming the ICWA discriminates on the basis of race and infringes on states’ rights.
Read the full article at The Washington Post website.
After initially deciding the closely-watched case in favor of Indian Country, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals announced that it will hear the dispute all over again. A larger set of judges will now scrutinize the landmark law but tribal nations remain confident that their sovereign rights and their most precious resource — their children — will win out in the end.
Read the full article at the Indianz.com website.
Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an order directing a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to be reheard en banc — before the entire Fifth Circuit. As previously reported, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit had held ICWA Constitutional in August, finding it was not a race-based statute that would violate the Equal Protection Clause.
Read the full article at the Indian Country Today website.
Read the statement from the Protect ICWA Campaign at the Native American Rights Fund website.
More than 40 years after the federal law took effect, the child welfare system continues to absorb a disproportionate number of Native American children nationally and in Utah, noted Alisa Lee, Indian child welfare program administrator for the Utah Division of Child and Family Services.
Data provided by Lee’s office shows that roughly 5% of the total 4,659 children in the Utah foster care system are Native American, though census figures indicate just 1% of the state’s population belongs to the demographic group.
Read the full article at the Deseret News website.
In ‘Brackeen v. Bernhardt’, decided on Aug. 9, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the Indian Child Welfare Act was constitutional. We applaud the Fifth Circuit for upholding this federal law that is vital to safeguarding the welfare of Indian children.
Read the full article at the New York Law Journal website.
In the 21st century, we are still fighting to protect indigenous children whether it is north or south of the Mexican border. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act was a critical step to keep our families, communities and identities intact. Now, some legal protections need to be enacted for the indigenous children being stolen at the Mexico border.
Read the full opinion piece at the Grand Forks Herald website.
United States: Fifth Circuit Upholds Indian Child Welfare Act As Constitutional. Akin Gump (Aug. 14, 2019)
Federal District Court of Appeals Upholds Indian Child Welfare Act. Nonprofit Quarterly (Aug. 13, 2019)
EDITORIAL: ICWA ruling a victory for tribes. Tahlequah Daily Press. (Aug. 13, 2019)
Fifth Circuit Court reaffirms Indian Child Welfare is constitutional. The Ada News (Aug. 12, 2019)
Paxton likely to challenge ruling upholding Indian adoption law. Austin Statesman (Aug. 12, 2019)
Fifth Circuit Squarely Rejects Challenge to ICWA. The National Law Review (Aug. 12, 2019)
Indian Child Welfare Act Upheld By Fifth Circuit. KGOU (Aug. 12, 2019)
5th Circuit upholds Indian Child Welfare Act as constitutional, reversing lower court. The TexasTribune (Aug. 10, 2019)
Court panel upholds Indian Child Welfare Act. Newscenter ABC 11 (Aug. 9, 2019)
Federal Law Protecting Indian Children and Families Will Stand. The Chronicle of Social Change (Aug. 9, 2019)
Court ruled that ICWA is constitutional. Indian Country Today (Aug. 9, 2019)
Now the [Indian Child Welfare Act] is facing its most serious challenge yet. In a case that has implications far beyond the adoptions of American Indian children, three non-Native families and three Republican state attorneys general have sued the federal government saying that the ICWA relies on racial classifications that violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
In October, a federal judge in Texas agreed, striking down the Indian Child Welfare Act for the first time in its 41-year history. The government, joined by five tribes and supported by many more, appealed the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but advocates of the law are worried that if the court upholds the earlier decision, it could call into question all other federal Indian laws.
The battle is at once profoundly personal for each family involved and simultaneously so broad that many believe it could reshape U.S.-Indian relations for generations to come. It is about reckoning with the nation’s brutal past and protecting the possibility of its future.
Read the full article at the Time website.
A LAW KEY to preventing state welfare agencies from separating Indigenous children from their families is at risk of being overturned thanks to the yearslong effort of a network of libertarian and right-wing organizations.
In the 1970s, between a quarter and a third of Indigenous children across the United States had been removed from their homes. Social services often cited neglect or deprivation — euphemisms for poverty — as grounds for placing children in the custody of non-Native families and institutions, offering birth parents little opportunity for redress. Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978 in order to reform a system designed to destroy Indigenous people.
Read the full article at The Intercept website.
Zachary, or A.L.M. as he is called in legal papers, has a Navajo birth mother, a Cherokee birth father and adoptive parents, Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, neither of whom is Native American. The Brackeens are challenging a federal law governing Native American children in state foster care: It requires that priority to adopt them be given to Native families, to reinforce the children’s tribal identity.
Read the full article at the New York Times website.
So far, 325 tribes and states, including Montana, Idaho, Utah and Colorado, have joined forces to preserve a law that gives Native families preference in adoption of Native children.
Read the full article at the Wyoming Public Media website.
1978 law giving preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings involving American Indian children is an unconstitutional race-based intrusion on state powers that has caused families to be “literally torn apart,” an attorney told a federal appeals court March 13.
But supporters of the decades-old law say it’s needed to protect and preserve Native American culture and families. In court, lawyers for Indian tribes argued that the law’s definition of an Indian child is based not on race, but on tribal political affiliations.
Read the full article at the Navajo-Hopi Observer website.
A case before a federal appeals court could upend an historic adoption law meant to combat centuries of brutal discrimination against American Indians and keep their children with families and tribal communities.
For the first time, a few states have sued to overturn the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which Congress enacted in 1978 as an antidote to entrenched policies of uprooting Native children and assimilating them into mainstream white culture.
Now, in a country roiled by debates over race and racial identity, there’s a chance the 41-year-old law could be overturned by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the country’s most conservative court. (The law applies to federally recognized tribes.)
Read the full article at the Indianz.com website.
Non-Indians think they know better than Indians what is best for Native American children, said lawyers for the Navajo Nation in arguments before a federal appeals court.
It’s a bold argument, but goes to the heart of the case in Brackeen v. Bernhardt. Under the Indian Child Welfare Act, Indian tribes have priority over non-Indians in Native American adoptions.
Last year in Texas, a trial judge struck down the Act. Now the tribes are defending ICWA in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Read the full article at the FindLaw.com website.
Read related coverage at:
A case before a federal appeals court this week could upend an historic adoption law meant to combat centuries of brutal discrimination against American Indians and keep their children with families and tribal communities.
For the first time, a few states have sued to overturn the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which Congress enacted in 1978 as an antidote to entrenched policies of uprooting Native children and assimilating them into mainstream white culture.
Now, in a country roiled by debates over race and racial identity, there’s a chance the 41-year-old law could be overturned by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the country’s most conservative court. (The law applies to federally recognized tribes.)
Overturning the law, its proponents say, could significantly increase the number of American Indian children adopted into non-Native families.
Read the full research article at the Pew Trusts website.
The Indian Child Welfare Act is under attack and tribes are pushing back after conservative and Christian groups joined a closely-watched battle over the landmark federal law.
Read the full article at the Indianz.com website.
The Indian Child Welfare Act requires that Native American children be placed in Native American foster or adoptive homes, where possible, to maintain their heritage and identity.
The law is being challenged with increasing regularity in courts and by special-interest groups who contend it prioritizes race over a child’s best interest.
In October, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas declared key parts of the act unconstitutional, the first time any court has struck down the law.
That decision has been appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by the federal government and by multiple tribes, including the Navajo and Cherokee nations. But Tamera Shanker, an attorney who represents the ICWA unit of the Navajo Nation Office of Child and Family Services, believes the question will ultimately end up before the Supreme Court.
Read the full article at the Indianz.com website.
A federal appeals court granted a stay requested by the four tribes on Monday to preserve the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act.
“The law is going to stay the same for now,” said Dan Lewerenz, one of the attorneys working on the Brackeen v. Zinke case.
That means Native American families will stay together under the law.
Read the full article at the Indian Country Today website.
Read related:
“Court puts hold on controversial Indian Child Welfare Act ruling” at the Indianz.com website. (12/4/2018)
The United States will join four tribes defending the Indian Child Welfare Act against a district court ruling in Texas.
The Department of Justice, with the Department of Interior and Health and Human Services, and their officials, filed a notice of appeal on Nov. 30 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, according to a joint statement from the National Indian Child Welfare Association, the National Congress of American Indians, the Native American Rights Fund, and the Association on American Indian Affairs.
Read the full article at the Indian Country Today website.
Related coverage:
“A Long Legal Battle is Expected as Tribes Appeal Texas Court Ruling on ICWA” at the Indian Country Today website. (11/27/1018)
“Tribes Appeal, Seek Stay on Indian Child Welfare Act Ruling; Feds Yet to Act” at the Chronicle of Social Change website. (11/21/2018)
“Why conservatives are attacking a law meant to protect Native American families” at the Washington Post website. (11/21/2018)
SHERRY TREPPA POSTED ON WEDNESDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2018
A Texas judge’s recent decision to strike down the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, sets a dangerous precedent that unravels federal policy carefully designed to correct centuries of tragic injustices committed against Indian people.It not only threatens the wellbeing of Native children and their families, but also tribal sovereignty. Further, the ruling could undo many of the collaborative relationships our tribes have forged with local governments and states that already acknowledge the benefits of preserving Native families.
Read the full op-ed at the Lake County News website.
October 23, 2018
In passing the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in 1978, the clear intent of Congress was to protect the best interest of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families. Oversight and enforcement authority regarding the provisions of ICWA was left to judges presiding over child custody cases.
Read the full statement on the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges website.
In a decision published by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was declared unconstitutional, jeopardizing the landmark legislation protecting tribal children.
This egregious decision ignores the direct federal government-to-government relationship and decades upon decades of precedent that have upheld tribal sovereignty and the rights of Indian children and families. Through 40 years of implementation, ICWA’s goal is to promote family stability and integrity. It continues to be the gold standard in child welfare policy.
Read the full statement on the Native American Rights Fund website.
