On October 5, 2026, the United States Supreme Court declined to take up a challenge to the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), denying certiorari in N.R. v. Ellison, a case where the petitioners argued both ICWA and the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act (MIFPA) violate equal protection.
ICWA is a 47-year-old federal law that protects the well-being and best interests of Indian children and families by upholding family integrity and stability and by keeping Indian children connected to their communities and cultures. ICWA also reaffirms the inherent rights of Tribal Nations to be involved in child welfare matters involving their citizens.
“The Supreme Court correctly denied cert in this case, rejecting another attack on the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA),” said NARF Staff Attorney Leonard Powell. “Just three years ago, we successfully defeated a similar equal protection attack on ICWA and Tribal sovereignty in Haaland v Brackeen. ICWA remains a vital protection for Tribal families and Tribal sovereignty.”
“The petitioners tried to turn a state-court dispute over who could join a child-protection case into a vehicle for overturning ICWA and Minnesota’s own protections for Native families,” said m boulette of boulette PLLC. “Those protections are too important to be put at risk that way, and the Supreme Court was right to decline the invitation.”
For decades, ICWA has been recognized by child welfare experts as the gold standard in child welfare practice, and the law has helped tens of thousands of Indian children and families who find themselves in state child welfare systems. In the past several years, anti-Tribal interests have launched a series of legal challenges against ICWA, with the goal of broadly undermining tribal sovereignty.
N.R. v. Ellison stems from state child-protection proceedings for twin children who are enrolled members of the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota. Non-relative former foster parents sought to intervene in those proceedings to prevent the children from being placed with family and argued that ICWA and MIFPA are unconstitutional violations of equal protection. The parties to the case—the children’s mother, the State, Faribault-Martin County Human Services, the guardian ad litem, and the Red Lake Nation—unanimously supported placing the children with their maternal grandmother and not the former foster parents. The Juvenile Court denied that intervention and the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the Juvenile Court’s decision. Today’s action by the United States Supreme Court leaves those Minnesota decisions in place. NARF represented the children’s mother before the United States Supreme Court, alongside Frundt, Lundquist & Gustafson.
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