Author: Kate E. Fort

Qualified Expert Witness Case out of Alaska [ICWA]

Kate Fort

Here

Sometimes I read the first paragraph of a decision and just put my head on my desk. Feel free to join me today:

An Alaska Native teenage minor affiliated with the Native Village of Kotzebue (Tribe) was taken into custody by the Office of Children’s Services (OCS) and placed at a residential treatment facility in Utah. She requested a placement review hearing after being injured by a facility staff member. At the time of the hearing, the minor’s mother wanted to regain custody. At the hearing the superior court had to make removal findings under the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) as well as findings authorizing continued placement in a residential treatment facility under Alaska law. ICWA requires testimony from a qualified expert witness for the removal of an Indian child. At the hearing, the minor’s Utah therapist testified as a mental health professional. The minor, as well as her parents and the Tribe, objected to the witness being qualified as an ICWA expert, but the superior court allowed it. The minor argues that the superior court erred in determining that the witness was qualified as an expert for the purposes of ICWA. Because the superior court correctly determined that knowledge of the Indian child’s tribe was unnecessary in this situation when it relied on the expert’s testimony for its ICWA findings, we affirm.

 

Domicile Case out of Utah Supreme Court [ICWA]

Kate Fort

Here.

A decision in a long running adoption case out of Utah.

MILS Survey for Michigan Tribal Members

Kate Fort

The letter:

Dear Tribal Community Member,

Michigan Indian Services (MILS) is asking for your feedback on an important survey. 

MILS provides legal services statewide to income-eligible individuals and tribes, advocates for the rights of individuals that advance systems of justice, and works to preserve Indian families through state and tribal courts.

The purpose of this survey is to identify the highest priorities related to legal services for low-income Native Americans. 

MILS will use the results to prioritize services for the next seven years, so your participation is extremely important to us.

MILS is offering an incentive drawing for a total of seven $100 gift cards for those who complete the survey over the next several months. Drawing dates are August 1, October 1, December 1, February 1, April 1, June 1, and September 30. 

You can access the survey link here. It takes about 15 minutes to complete: 

Paw Paw Schools Officially Change Mascot to the Red Wolves

Kate Fort

Here

Crosscut Article on Greer Case

ilpc

Here

ICWA was thereafter applied to the case, but the damage was done — the children were placed in foster care without the normal protections the law would have offered them. Now, the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska are challenging the decision in the Washington State Supreme Court. If the court’s decision is upheld, advocates say the case could significantly weaken the use of ICWA in Washington by raising the bar for what qualifies as a “reason to know” that a child is “Indian” in the eyes of the law.

Kathryn Fort, director of Michigan State’s Indian Law Clinic, who is arguing on behalf of the tribes in the case involving Greer and Graham, says that it shouldn’t be so difficult. The burden of checking in with a tribe is low, she says, but the outcome has immense implications for the family, children and tribe.

Briefing and oral arguments here.

Children’s Bureau Letter on Termination of Parental Rights During COVID

Kate Fort

Childrens-Bureau-Letter-Termination-of-Parental-Rights-and-Adoption-Assistance

A decision to file a TPR petition should be made in light of the impediments that a parent might face as a result of the pandemic. An agency should evaluate carefully whether parents have had a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate that they have made the necessary efforts to reunify with their children before taking that step.

As such, I urge agencies to continue to consider the totality of each family’s circumstances prior to filing a TPR petition. During the pandemic and its aftermath, agencies also may want to consider instituting protocols that provide an extra layer of review prior to filing a TPR petition.

Oregon ICWA Passed by Unanimous Votes in the Oregon Legislature

Kate Fort

HB 4214 (OICW)

In special session, both houses of the Oregon legislature passed HB 4214 (Oregon Indian Child Welfare) unanimously, the Senate just 10 minutes ago!!

Briefing and Oral Arguments in In re Z.J.G. [Washington Supreme Court]

ilpc

This is the appeal of the court of appeals opinion posted here.

Oral arguments here

Briefs:

The MSU ICWA Appellate Project co-represented the Tribes in this case, along with the Center for Indigenous Research and Justice.

Vice: How Parents are Pressured to Give up their Children for Adoption

Kate Fort

I did not talk to this reporter, but it feels like a word for word account of my classroom lecture on this issue:

Here

The explicit coercion of that era gave way to domestic adoption industry we have today—which is regulated by an inconsistent patchwork of state laws, unlike the federal regulations applied to international and foster care adoptions. And gradually, demand grew: By the mid-70s, increased access to birth control and legalized abortion and lessening stigma of single parenthood plummeted the supply of healthy white babies. In 2014, approximately 18,000 infants were placed for domestic adoption. In 2017, the CEO of the National Council for Adoption estimated that around one million families are trying to adopt at any given time in the U.S.

I have yet to find a replacement for the type of research the Donaldson Institute did–sadly it wound down operations a couple of years ago.

“Black Families Matter” -Marty Guggenheim in the Chronicle for Social Change on Ending ASFA

Kate Fort

Here.

These statements, however, have thus far only been focused on the need to change the means by which we exercise the police power in this country. It is, perhaps, too easy for child welfare organizations to attack a problem they have not played a significant role in creating. But these same groups have not yet turned their eyes inward to ask whether and how the system they helped build is also deeply shaped by racism.

This is a moment that also must focus on how we exercise the parens patriae power in this country (the power of the state to protect the vulnerable). This starts with a major overhaul of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, often referred to by its initials ASFA, which was signed into law in 1997.

With certain exceptions that states too often ignore, ASFA requires that child welfare agencies seek to terminate the parental rights of children whenever they have been in foster for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Courts are instructed to terminate parental rights unless the parent can show that the conditions that led to the removal initially no longer exist. The law has been responsible for the massive destruction of black and brown families. More than 2 million children’s parents’ rights have been terminated by American courts since ASFA was enacted.

This is not about the intentions of those who developed the system we have. It is about listening to the people it harms. It is an unpleasant truth that many of the organizations whose collective voice is condemning racist police practices now have for decades celebrated the approach enshrined in law by ASFA, some by explicitly celebrating adoption and others using the euphemism “permanency.”