Native Americans Threatened by Supreme Court Ruling

Should Baby Veronica have been able to be removed from
her adopted parents? The Supreme Court says no.
Image: Shutterstock

A high profile case among Native American tribes was struck down by the Supreme Court this week involving the custody rights of a child known as Baby Veronica.  The child, whose father is a member of the Cherokee tribe, was adopted in an arrangement made by her mother before her birth.  Tribal members claimed that the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) should have prevented the private adoption from taking place.  While lower courts had ruled previously in favor of father Dusten Brown and awarded him custody in 2011, the most recent ruling will likely send Baby Veronica back to her adoptive parents in South Carolina.  It will be up the state courts, however, to determine placement.
  
Tribal advocates are infuriated by the ruling, which says undermines a very important piece of tribal sovereignty.  Cultural preservation had been severely hurt before the ICWA was passed, because state run social service offices were taking children off of tribal land and placing them in non-Indian homes.  The statute had been meant to prevent losing children in the reservation and leaving custody issues up to the tribal communities.  The court, however, disagreed that the law had the ability to take children that had already been adopted, in particular to place children with a father who had previously relinquished paternal rights and had never been in contact with the child prior to the custody suit.
  
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority decision with a clear distaste that the power of labeling a child as Cherokee holds in South Carolina.  The girl involved in the case is 1.2% Cherokee, and was two years old when she was forced away from her adopted parents into the home of her biological father.  Justice Thomas and Justice Breyer also echoed the sentiments that Cherokee status did not hold enough power to undo a legal private adoption.  Former Senator James Abourek of South Dakota, who helped pass the ICWA in 1978, was furious at the ruling and called it a deliberate attack on tribal sovereignty.  Many other tribal advocates feel similarly, and fear their rights will be undermined again in the near future.

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