US Supreme Court ruling rejects challenges to Indian Child Welfare Act News
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US Supreme Court ruling rejects challenges to Indian Child Welfare Act

The US Supreme Court declined on Thursday to disturb a federal statute governing the adoption and foster proceedings for Indigenous children in the US. In a 7-2 ruling, the court rejected non-Indigenous adoptive parents’ and the state of Texas’s challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), siding with concerns from the Indigenous community.

The court issued three findings in its Thursday decision.

First, the court found that—despite petitioners’ claims—Congress does maintain the authority to regulate adoption and foster proceedings involving Indigenous children. Petitioners’ contended that the proceedings fall within the realm of family law, which is usually governed by state law. However, the court found that “Congress’s power to legislate with respect to Indians is well established and broad,” citing various prior decisions around the US Constitution’s Indian Commerce Clause.

Second, the court rejected petitioners’ anti-commandeering challenge to the ICWA. Under the US Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, the anti-commandeering doctrine bars the federal government from requiring the states to enforce federal laws. Petitioners argued that various provisions under the ICWA require states to provide government services to ensure that Indigenous children are kept within their communities. The petitioners argued that this amounted to a “commandeering” of state services by the federal government, since Congress wrote the relevant statute. The court, however, found that the requirement applied “evenhandedly” to both public and private efforts to protect Indigenous children.

Third, the court declined to address petitioners’ final two claims, including an equal protection challenge to ICWA placement preferences and a nondelegation challenge to tribal alteration of placement preferences. The court found that petitioners lacked proper standing before the court to challenge either provision of the ICWA. Specifically, the court said that the non-Indigenous adoptive parents and Texas were unable to demonstrate likely harm, which is one of the three requirements to establish standing before a federal court. Because the petitioners lacked standing, the court did not delve into the legal merits of the petitioners’ final two challenges.

The court first heard oral arguments in the case back in November 2022. Thursday’s decision involves three consolidated cases involving child custody proceedings governed by ICWA.

The ICWA was enacted in 1978 after studies revealed that 85 percent of Native children removed from the home were placed outside of the Native community. The act provides states with guidance and standards for handling child abuse, neglect, and adoption cases involving a Native child. In child placement cases, the act gives preference to a member of the child’s family, members of the child’s tribe, or other Native families over non-Natives and non-relatives.

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