Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

A 5-4 split, but not on the usual lines.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-399_8mj8.pdf


SCOTUS punted on the issue of who is a Native American by ruling that even if the biological father was one, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 does not apply.  So a win for the adoptive couple, a loss for the biological father, and a wash for the Indians, as while this narrows the scope of this act, some were worried the court might wade in with an opinion as to who is an Indian and thus limit the rights of the tribes to define themselves.

[minionofmidas]

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-399_8mj8.pdf

Correct link. The tribes do not have the right to define themselves right now - unlike American states they remain subject to preclearance on constitutional issues.

[minionofmidas]

Also, according to the decision "it is undisputed that Baby Girl is an “Indian child” as defined by the ICWA because she is an unmarried minor who “is eligible for membership in an Indian tribe and is the biological child of a member of an Indian tribe". So how could the court have conceivably ruled that she is not? (This being the Cherokee Nation, one of the very few Indian Nations to have no minimal blood quantum requirement - any degree of Cherokee ancestry will serve. But not Cherokee Freedman ancestry. Oh no. Even though they were members of the Nation for fourty years until its dissolution with the Dawes Act - in its BIA-precleared Constitution and not circumstantially a Nation that both would be a large one even with stringent blood quantum requirements, and whose ancestry is widely dispersed among the surrounding (basically) White population, her Cherokee ancestry is, in fact, 3/256.)

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The fear was that the court might use this case to examine the constitutional merits of the Federal laws supporting the definitions various tribes have adopted for themselves,  It decided it didn't need to do that to decide this case.

[minionofmidas]

Incidentally, while Thomas' concurring opinion doesn't do that, it delves pretty deeply into the strange, meandering, deeply-distasteful-to-any-originalist way Constitutional Law has evolved on the precise relationship of the Tribal-Federal-State relationship.