The Second Appellate Court in California issued a partially published opinion (Justin L. v. Superior Court) (or here). Part of the published part includes the following:
We are growing weary of appeals in which the only error is the
Department’s failure to comply with ICWA. (See In re I.G. (2005) 133
Cal.App.4th 1246, 1254-1255 [14 published opinions in 2002 through 2005, and
72 unpublished cases statewide in 2005 alone reversing in whole or in part for
noncompliance with ICWA].) Remand for the limited purpose of the ICWA
compliance is all too common. (Ibid.) ICWA’s requirements are not new. Yet
the prevalence of inadequate notice remains disturbingly high. This case presents a particularly egregious example of the practice of flouting ICWA. The
Department concedes it sent no notices, notwithstanding the juvenile court’s
specific order that it do so. And, we have been given no indication that the
Department has attempted to mitigate the damage it caused in failing to attend to
ICWA’s dictates by sending notices while this proceeding was pending.
I am not sure if the court is referring to cases only heard by the Second Appellate Circuit, or why the court only listed information from 2005. In the three years since then, departmental compliance hasn’t gotten much better. In a survey of state court ICWA cases for 2007 (1/07-2/26/08), California only published 19 ICWA cases but had 308 ICWA cases total. While nationwide, 161 ICWA cases were remanded for ICWA violations, a vast majority–85%–of those were California notice cases. In addition, of all the non-California ICWA cases nationwide, only 9 out of 58 cases were notice cases, and only 2 of those were remanded or overturned.
Turtle Talk 