Protectors of child welfare and tribal sovereignty filed an amicus brief on August 28, 2024, urging the Minnesota Supreme Court to dismiss a baseless challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) that litigants supported by anti-sovereignty forces have attempted to insert into a Minnesota child welfare case involving children eligible for citizenship in the Red Lake Nation.
The amicus brief emphasizes the fact that ICWA’s constitutionality is not a question that the Court should address in this case. Minnesota child welfare laws, not ICWA, governed when the children at issue were moved from a temporary foster placement to a relative’s home. Most child welfare agencies attempt to place children with extended family when they cannot safely remain with their family of origin. The former foster parents challenging ICWA’s constitutionality here are not a preferred placement for the children because they are not relatives. Further, their attempt to characterize ICWA as racial discrimination is grounded in fundamental misunderstandings of equal protection and federal Indian law.
“The amicus brief exposes this attempt to challenge ICWA as ungrounded in both law and logic,” said Native American Rights Fund (NARF) Staff Attorney Sydney Tarzwell.
NARF, along with co-counsel Joseph Halloran and Christopher Smith from the Jacobson Law Group, filed the brief defending ICWA on behalf of the California Tribal Families Coalition, United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund, the Association on American Indian Affairs, the National Congress of American Indians, the National Indian Child Welfare Association, and the Navajo Nation. As the brief states, the Amici share a vital interest in preserving ICWA’s standards, which were “designed to halt the ‘wholesale removal’ of Native children from their homes and communities.”
“We stand united with our relatives across Indian Country in proactively defending Native families, Tribal Nations’ inherent sovereignty, and the United States’ ability and responsibility to deliver on its trust and treaty obligations,” said Kirk Francis, President of the United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund.
ICWA, considered the gold standard in U.S. child welfare law, protects children who are citizens of a Tribal Nation and children who are eligible for citizenship and have a biological parent who is a citizen. Passed by Congress in 1978 to stop the mass removal of Native children from their families and communities, ICWA affirms the inherent right of Tribal Nations to protect the welfare of their children. Anti-tribal interests have raised a series of similar unprincipled challenges to ICWA and have been unsuccessful in having the law declared unconstitutional.
To learn more about ICWA and NARF’s work to ensure the welfare of Native American children, visit: icwa.narf.org.
More blog posts
