Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

Fletcher & Fort: “Indian Children and Their Guardians ad Litem”

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Kate Fort and I published a short paper for a Boston University Law Review mini-symposium on Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl: “Indian Children and Their Guardians ad Litem.”

An excerpt:

One of the primary goals of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is to limit the influence or bias of state workers in decisions placing American Indian children out of their home and community.1 While this focus usually concerns state social workers, the officials who most often seek removal of a child, or the courts, the body that issues the orders and opinions, guardians ad litem (GALs) receive less attention.2 Despite this lack of attention, GALs exert a similar level of influence as state social workers. In Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl,3 the role of the GAL was unusual but critical – the GAL, while officially appointed by the court, was handpicked by the adoptive parents.4 The role of the GAL remains understudied in the ICWA literature, though GALs continue to exert enormous influence in the courts. Unfortunately, many GALs throughout the nation subvert the national policy embodied by the ICWA by advocating against the implementation of the statute in case after case.5

There are three other papers in the symposium:

Perspective I by Professor Barbara Ann Atwood is available here, 

Perspective II by Professor James G. Dwyer is available here, and

Perspective III by Professors Naomi Cahn and June Carbone is available here.

 

Tulsa World Coverage Of Cherokee Nation Filing in Legal Fees Case

ilpc

Here.

Also the ICT article is here.

Harvard Law Review Comment on Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

An excerpt:

It is this very inability to escape uncertainty, qualification, and conflict that ultimately situates Adoptive Couple in the Court’s parental rights canon and that suggests its ongoing significance. Like its predecessors, Adoptive Couple is another deeply divided and closely fought decision, which refuses to wholly deny the power of biology even as it insists upon proactive parenting and affective relationships. The conditions and disclaimers embedded in the case’s holding, taken together with the equal conviction and fervor of both opposing opinions, thus serve as proof of the interminability of such judicial debates about the family.94 Further, the Court’s very willingness to engage in a stark contest over biology versus family in a case that by no means required it — and to engage vigorously, even viciously — seems a harbinger of things to come: in an age of momentous changes in the composition of the family, alluded to both in the decision and in other decisions of the Term, questions regarding which relationships and nontraditional ties warrant judicial protection promise to appear with ever more frequency and complexity. As Adoptive Couple shows, however, the Court remains mired in the same disputes it first unleashed forty years earlier, still grappling with the fundamental tension between nature and nurture. Yet this irresolution and ongoing struggle may well be a cause for comfort rather than concern, a sign that the essential questions about the most essential ties and  relationships remain open for investigation and reinvestigation.

Prof. Karen Tani Writes About “Remembering the ‘Forgotten Child'” in Light of Adoptive Couple at Jotwell

Kate Fort

Here.

These revelations are sure to disturb any reader, but the point of Jacobs’s important article is not to expose adoption proponents as disingenuous or malevolent. It is to place an ongoing phenomenon—Indian children’s disproportionately high rate of separation from their families—in proper historical context. (P. 154.) “It is no coincidence,” Jacobs writes, “that the IAP arose during the era in which the federal government promoted termination [of tribal nations’ special status] and relocation policies for American Indians.” (P. 152.) Adoptions enabled the federal government to terminate its responsibilities, child by child, by shifting them to “the ultimate ‘private’ sector.” (P.154.) By extension, Jacobs argues, adoptive families also advanced the government’s long-term “effort[] to eliminate Indianness.” (P. 154.) This, Jacobs demonstrates, was the backdrop for the ICWA. When tribal leaders and advocacy organizations convinced Congress to enact the new law, it was a small victory in a long war. And when plaintiffs invoke the ICWA today, they raise a hard-won shield.

We agree that Margaret Jacobs “Remembering the ‘Forgotten Child’: The American Indian Child Welfare Crisis of the 1960s and 1970s” 37 American Indian Quarterly 136 (2013) is an excellent and important article.

Tulsa World Article on the Standing Our Ground for Veronica Brown Group

Kate Fort

Here.

Stand Our Ground will become a permanent program under the umbrella of the Lenapeowsi Foundation, a nonprofit group that teaches stomp dancing and other elements of tribal culture.

Veronica was enrolled in a stomp dance class, and that’s how Michael, as the foundation’s executive director, got to know her Cherokee family.

“I got to looking at the case and realized there were some major issues,” she said. “Then I realized that it wasn’t just this one case.”

While drawing attention to specific adoptions that might seem questionable, Stand Our Ground will also push for at least two specific reforms.

First, state officials should improve oversight of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, a law that has been passed in all 50 states to regulate the movement of children across state lines in adoption cases.

“Oklahoma seems to be in the practice of signing ICPCs retroactively, after children have already left the state,” Michael said. “That needs to stop.”

Secondly, all birth parents — even fathers — should have to appear in front of a judge to surrender their rights before an adoption moves forward, Michael said.

 

Andrew Cohen on the Redskins Nickname Controversy and Critical Issues Facing Indian Country

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here.

An excerpt:

Why didn’t anyone like Costas or Krauthammer, or any veterans group for that matter, stand up for Dusten Brown, who is still today a member of our nation’s military?  Right or wrong, why wasn’t his case or cause the subject of great national debate? Instead of talking about a football team’s name, why aren’t we talking today instead about the role of religion in the Brown case or the disturbing revisionist trend some see in these custody and adoption cases, a trend exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s ruling, that enables non-Indian couples to get around the protections of the Child Welfare Act?

The new debate over the team’s name comes at a time of great anguish for the American people and few have been hurt more by the government shutdown than Native Americans. The economic costs have been great but so have the social ones. And even before the shutdown, during the period of sequestration when many federal programs were cut or limited, American Indian interests in particular were harmed. Did you know that the Indian Health Service, which tries to ensure medical coverage for tribes, was not exempted from the effect of sequestration the way most every other large federal health program was?

When the sequestration began to hit, in March of this year, the chairwoman of the National Indian Health Board told members of a Senate committee: “Since the beginning of the year, there have been 100 suicide attempts in 110 days on Pine Ridge. We can’t take any more cuts. We just can’t.”  Why are so many talking about the nickname of a football team when so few are talking about these suicide attempts on an Indian reservation and our government’s inability to adequately fund mental health services for these people?

AAIA and NICWA Legal Guide to Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

Kate Fort5 Comments

Here. (pdf)
Includes summary of the case and legal analysis, including the impact of state statutes and tribal/state agreements.

On Justice Sotomayor’s Judicial Philosophy

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Angelique EagleWoman sent around this short article commenting on Justice Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, which contains this remark:

In literally every case involving Native American rights in any form, Sotomayor has always sided with the Natives. In Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band v. Patchak, U.S. v. Jicarilla Apache Nation, Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter, and most recently in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, Sotomayor has taken the side of the Native American parties, even if that meant her being one of the only dissenters, if not the sole dissenter.

Thus, even though Sotomayor can be accurately labeled as “liberal, but unpredictable,” she’s still quite predictable in cases involving Native rights.

– See more at: http://westlawinsider.com/top-legal-news/sonia-sotomayor-liberal-yet-unpredictable-with-one-exception/#sthash.1d1vpQzq.dpuf

As an advocate for most tribal causes, I find it refreshing to see a Justice take an interest in Indian law and tribal interests. Even when she’s in dissent, which she will be nearly every time until (and if) there is a massive shift in the Supreme Court, she gives a voice to the tribal advocates and their cause that has been missing since the retirements of Justices Blackmun and Brennan (and, I would argue, the entire history of the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary). In fact, Justice Sotomayor’s SCT record is far better than tribal advocates could have hoped when President Obama nominated her.

But a word of caution. My sense is that the strong dissents coming from Justice Sotomayor are being heard by those on the Court in opposition to her views — and they are responding in kind. I read Jicarilla and Adoptive Couple (despite the real and continuing tragedy of that case) as being very narrow questions, but looking at the majority opinions, there are broad statements directly attacking important understandings of tribal interests that might not have appeared in a majority opinion except in response to a strong dissent. Would Justice Alito have made such damning remarks about the trust responsibility and the Indian Child Welfare Act unless the legal positions the majority adopted had not been so powerfully attacked by Justice Sotomayor? I wonder.

An analog of sorts are the equal protection cases, where there is simply no full-throated defense of marriage equality from the liberals on the Court so terrifically and justifiably worried about losing Justice Kennedy’s vote. When you’ve the votes, you don’t need to defend the position as much. But, in the case of affirmative action, where the last strong defense of AA came in Bakke, the liberal side’s analysis hasn’t been developed at all. It has hurt in the long run.

In sum, Justice Sotomayor’s dissents are outstanding and powerful, and much of what she argues may one day become the law. At least someone on the Court is making those arguments. And I suspect the majority knows, like Justice Scalia admitted in other contexts, that they’re on the wrong side of history; hence, the expansive dicta. And to lower court judges, dicta is the law. Tribes are timeless entities. But there’s a long slog ahead.

P.S. I thank Yale law prof. Reva Siegel, whose scholarship and comments significantly influenced these views of mine.

South Carolina Drops Dusten Brown Extradition Request

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here, h/t to How Appealing.

South Carolina Letter

Oklahoma Counsel Letter to Sheriff

Dissents in the Lift of Stay in Baby Girl Case and Additional Coverage of Proceedings

Kate Fort

From the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Here.

 In addition to Veronica’s interests, the Cherokee Nation has been a party to all of the proceedings in the courts of South Carolina, in the United States Supreme Court, and in the courts of this State. As such, the Cherokee Nation has a direct and substantial interest in seeing that Veronica’s rights as an Indian child and member of the Cherokee Nation are fully protected, including the right to the special best interests determination under the law of the case. It would be virtually impossible for any court to make this special best interests determination without hearing from the Cherokee Nation.

Reif, V.C.J.

 

Everything in the life of Baby Girl has changed since 2011, and therefore, I cannot join the majority’s decision to dissolve the temporary stay and to deny original jurisdiction.1 Although this is a complicated case, we should accept our legal responsibility to follow established law in making a determination having such a profound impact on the life of this child.

Gurich, J.

H/T Constitutional Law Prof Blog

Today’s Tulsa World coverage here (including a discussion of the contempt charges in South Carolina).