A.D. v. Washburn

ICWA Case Updates and Legal Clarifications

Kate Fort

Because of the recent media attention to ICWA, here’s a quick update and clarification of some legal details:

ICWA has not been amended, updated, or changed. Ever. The same language that Congress passed in 1978 is the same language in effect today.

In 2015 the Bureau of Indian Affairs updated the ICWA Guidelines for State Courts for the first time since 1979. These non-binding Guidelines are considered persuasive by many states and are in effect now. State courts are using them in their decisions. The National Council for Adoption (NCFA) and Building Arizona Families (BAF) challenged the implementation of the 2015 Guidelines in the Eastern District of Virginia (E.D.Va) where they lost a motion to dismiss. However, they have filed an appeal in the Fourth Circuit, which is where the case currently sits.

Also in 2015, the Department of the Interior proposed federal regulations. Those regulations went through an intensive comment period (you can still read all of those comments here). The regulations have not yet been promulgated, which means the federal government has not released them pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act–which means they do not currently exist. No one knows when they will be promulgated, or what they look like at this point. People (including us) speculate on when or if they will be promulgated before the end of the Administration, but we do not know. We do anticipate (speculate) there will be litigation over the regulations if/when they are.

Finally, the Goldwater litigation, which attracted a big splash of media attention when the complaint was filed in 2015, is on-going. Their goal is to have a court find that ICWA is a race-based law, meaning that the law would be subject to strict scrutiny in the federal courts (you can read a Wall Street Journal op-ed by the Goldwater attorneys discussing this here, but only if you want to and you probably don’t). This, of course, completely disregards long settled federal and state law (1) regarding tribes, tribal people, political status, and citizenship, which NICWA addresses perfectly at the end of an article here (and you can now disregard the reporter’s claim that ICWA has been amended because you’ve read this post and know that’s wrong). Along those lines, the plaintiffs in the Goldwater case just tried to add two new named plaintiffs, one of whom is not eligible for membership in any tribe. This has led to recent filings by both the federal and state governments named in this case asking the judge to dismiss. Both filings explain in detail why ICWA is not a race-based law.

(1) See, e.g., In the Interest of A.B., 663 N.W.2d 625, 636 (N.D. 2003); In re A.A., 176 P.3d 237, 240 (Kan. App. 2008); In re Adoption of Hannah S., 48 Cal. Rptr. 3d 605, 610-11 (Cal. Ct. App., 3rd. Dist. 2006); In re Interest of Phoenix L., 708 N.W.2d 786, 797-89 (Neb. 2006), rev’d on other grounds; Matter of M.K., 964 P.2d 241, 244 (Okla. Ct. App. 1998); In re Marcus S., 638 A.2d 1158, 1159 (Maine 1994); State ex rel. Children’s Services Div. v. Graves, 848 P.2d 133, 134 (Or. Ct. App. 1993); In re Miller, 451 N.W.2d 576, 579 (Mich. App. 1990); Matter of Appeal in Pima County Juvenile Action No. S-903, 635 P.2d 187, 193 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1981); Matter of Guardianship of D.L.L., 291 N.W.2d 278, 281 (S.D. 1980).

News Coverage of Goldwater (ICWA Litigation) Hearing

Kate Fort4 Comments

News coverage that confirms all accounts we received that this was a very difficult and discouraging hearing.

This hearing was on DOJ’s motion to dismiss the Goldwater ICWA litigation, which is contesting the constitutionality of ICWA. Relevant documents are here.

In response to questions we’ve been getting–this hearing was only on the government’s motion to dismiss. By the looks of it, the judge is not likely to dismiss the case at this point. Next up in the litigation is a fight over class certification, which the judge was delaying full briefing on until after the decision on the motion to dismiss. There will also be rulings on Navajo Nation and Gila River’s motions to intervene. Short answer to what the hearing likely means–this is looking like a long slog. We would really love to be wrong.

Update on Goldwater (ICWA Challenge) Filings

Kate Fort

DOJ filed their reply to Plaintiffs response on Defendants’ motions to dismiss. Arizona also filed a strong reply. Filing is completed in this matter, and a hearing on the motion to dismiss will be held on December 18th.

Plaintiffs filed a response to the amicus briefs from Casey Family Programs et al and NCAI et al. In addition, Citizens Equal Rights Alliance also filed an amicus brief in support of the Plaintiffs’ motion to certify the class.

The ICWA Legal Defense Memo has been updated and is available here.

Navajo Nation Motion for Intervention and Motion to Dismiss in ICWA Goldwater Litigation

Kate Fort

Intervention motion here.

Motion to dismiss here.

Additional documents in A.D. v. Washburn here.

Briefing Completed in Gila River Indian Community Motion to Intervene in ICWA Goldwater Litigation

Kate Fort

47 – Gila River Motion to Intervene

72 – OppositiontoGilaIntervention

76 – Gila River Reply in Support of Motion to Intervene

Plaintiffs in the case also filed their response to DOJ’s motion to dismiss. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for December 18.

Collected filings here.

DOJ Motion to Dismiss and Supporting Amicus Briefs in Goldwater (ICWA) Litigation

Kate Fort1 Comment

Motion to Dismiss here.

Footnote 8:

Plaintiffs do not seek the type of relief – increased funding or systemic changes in the quality of child-welfare services provided by state agencies – that the Ninth Circuit found unworthy of Younger abstention in Jamieson, 643 F.2d at 1354; instead, they demand that this Court enjoin state courts and agencies from applying long-standing state and federal laws to their ongoing child-custody proceedings, which clearly warrants equitable restraint under Younger.

(emphasis added)

Also:

Membership in a federally recognized Indian tribe, or being born the child of a member of such a sovereign entity, is not a forced association. ICWA does not require association, but rather protects associations that already exist.

In addition, Casey Family Programs plus twelve other national child welfare organizations filed this amicus brief (gold standard brief).

Finally, it is a key best practice to require courts to follow pre-established, objective rules that operate above the charged emotions of individual cases and that presume that preservation of a child’s ties to her parents is in her best interests. See National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, supra, at 14. Application of the best-interests-of-the-child standard should be guided by substantive rules and presumptions because “judges too may find it difficult, in utilizing vague standards like ‘the best interests of the child,’ to avoid decisions resting on subjective values.” Smith v. Organization of Foster Families for Equal. & Reform, 431 U.S. 816, 835 n.36 (1977). Courts should not terminate a child’s relationship to a parent based on “imprecise substantive standards that leave determinations unusually open to the subjective values of the judge.” Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 762-763 (1982).

Finally, the national Native organizations (NCAI, NICWA, AAIA) also filed this amicus brief (historical brief).

The Indian Child Welfare Act must be viewed in light of the historical abuses that it was intended to stop. For most of American history prior to ICWA’s enactment, federal Indian policy favored the removal of Indian children from their homes as a means of eroding Indian culture and tribes. State and private child welfare agencies later took on the implementation of these policies, carrying them out with little concern for the families or communities they affected. By the 1970’s, the widespread and wholesale removal of Indian children from their parents and communities resulted in a crisis recognized as “the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today.” H.R. REP. No. 95- 1386, at 9 (1978), reprinted in 1978 U.S.C.C.A.N. 7530, 7532.

Wall Street Journal Article on ICWA Lawsuits

Kate Fort

Here.

PDF copy here.

From the end of the article:

An Interior spokeswoman said Congress has determined it “is in the best interests of an Indian child to keep that child…with the child’s parents,” extended family and tribal community.

Kathryn Fort, a lawyer with the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University, defends the law and the guidelines. Ms. Fort said that before the law was passed, social workers would argue that it was in the “best interests” of an Indian child to be permanently removed from a house that was merely messy or lacked the most modern conveniences. “It’s really a way of allowing—and perpetuating—discrimination against Indians,” she said.

Supporters of the law say the adoption delays often required are part of its point. The law “demands excellence in how we treat Indian children,” said Matthew Newman, a staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund. “That often requires a bit of time.”

Federal ICWA Litigation Documents

Kate Fort1 Comment

We don’t post every time a document is filed in the current federal ICWA cases (EDVA, AZ, MN, NDOK), but will be posting updates as orders are filed or briefing is completed on an issue, as usual.

However, many filings for all four cases are being updated regularly here.

A.D. v. Washburn–ICWA Class Action Suit

Kate Fort

Complaint here.

Quite the first paragraph:

By honoring the moral imperatives enshrined in our Constitution, this nation has successfully shed much of its history of legally sanctioned discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity. We have seen in vivid, shameful detail how separate treatment is inherently unequal. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954). There can be no law under our Constitution that creates and applies pervasive separate and unequal treatment to individuals based on a quantum of blood tracing to a particular race or ethnicity. This country committed itself to that principle when it ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), and when it abandoned Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).

This complaint goes directly at the right of tribes to determine their tribal citizenry. From this paragraph on, the complaint bases everything on the “child’s race” or “Indian ancestry” and their “unequal treatment” under ICWA:

Most Indian tribes have only blood quantum or lineage requirements as prerequisites for membership. See Miss. Band of Choctaw Indians Const. art. III, § 1; Cherokee Nation Const. art. IV, § 1; Choctaw Nation of Okla. Const. art. II, § 1; Muscogee (Creek) Nation Const. art. III, § 2; Gila River Indian Community Const. art. III, § 1; Navajo Nation Code § 701; Guidelines for State Courts and Agencies in Indian Child Custody Proceedings, 80 Fed. Reg. 10146, 10153, B.3 (February 25, 2015) (“New Guidelines”). Consequently, ICWA’s definition of “Indian child” is based solely on the child’s race or ancestry.

The Goldwater Institute’s roll out and website regarding the case. This is highly funded, highly professional media campaign.