Supreme Court protects tribal sovereignty
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This is an issue area where the Sporadically Good Neil Gorsuch makes appearances, so there was reason to be optimistic, and in the end it wasn’t close:
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a 1978 law aimed at keeping Native American adoptees with their tribes and traditions, handing a victory to tribes that had argued that a blow to the law would upend the basic principles that have allowed them to govern themselves.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, acknowledged the thorny subjects raised in case, which pitted a white foster couple from Texas against five tribes and the Interior Department as they battled over the adoption of a Native American child.
“The issues are complicated,” she wrote. “But the bottom line is that we reject all of petitioners’ challenges to the statute, some on the merits and others for lack of standing.”
TSGNG’s concurrence, mostly joined by the Court’s two best members, is worth reading.
Meanwhile, Clarence Thomas dissented because fake law office history, and Alito dissented because Congress made a different policy judgment than he would have and hence must have acted unconstitutionally:
“Congress’s power to legislate with respect to Indians is well established and broad,” Justice Barrett wrote, adding that authority could extend to family law. “The Constitution does not erect a firewall around family law.”
In their dissenting opinions, Justices Thomas and Alito asserted that Congress had overstepped in regulating child welfare determinations.
The court’s majority, Justice Alito wrote, had lost sight of those most at risk: children.
The majority “decides one question after another in a way that disserves the rights and interests of these children and their parents, as well as our Constitution’s division of federal and state authority,” he added.
The Court erred in ignoring the “Helen Lovejoy” amendment to the Constitution. You know, the secret Federalist Society one.