By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to resolve a dispute over the legality of decades-old federal requirements that give Native American families priority to adopt Native American children in a challenge pursued by a group of non-Native adoptive families and the state of Texas.
The justices will review lower court decisions that declared several key parts of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 unconstitutional. President Joe Biden’s administration and several Native American tribes are defending the law, which aims to reinforce tribal connections by placing Native American children with relatives or within their communities.
The U.S. Congress passed the 1978 law in response to concern over child welfare practices that had resulted in the separation of large numbers of Native American children from their families through adoption or foster placement, usually in non-Native American homes. Tribes and Native American advocacy groups have maintained that the child welfare law helps preserve their culture and family connections.
The law set federal standards for removing children from their families and placing them for foster care or adoption, including requiring that “preference” be given to members of a child’s extended family, other tribe members or “other Indian families.”
The plaintiffs in the case are three couples who sought to adopt or foster Native American children – Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, Nick and Heather Libretti, and Jason and Danielle Clifford – and Altagracia Socorro Hernandez, whose Native American biological child was adopted by the Librettis. They sued in federal court in Texas in 2018 alongside the states of Texas, Louisiana and Indiana.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
