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The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a decades-old federal law that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings involving Native children.
In a 7-2 ruling, the court turned down a series of claims that sought to invalidate parts of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted to address concerns Native children were being separated from their families and placed in non-Native homes.
The court, in a ruling authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, dismissed claims from three white families, the state of Texas and other Republican-led states that argued the law was a form of racial discrimination and that it put the interests of tribes ahead of the children.
The ruling handed a win to Native American tribal leaders who have supported the law as a means of preserving their families, traditions and cultures.
“The issues are complicated,” Justice Barrett wrote in the ruling. “But the bottom line is that we
reject all of petitioners’ challenges to the statute, some on the merits and others for lack of standing.”
Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented from the decision, with Alito writing that the court’s decision “disserves the rights and interests of these children.”
The law was passed to address the alarming rate at which Native American and Alaska Native kids were being taken from their homes by public and private agencies and then placed with non-Native families.
