WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the landmark federal adoption law that seeks to keep Native American children with tribal families.
By a 7-2 vote, the justices rejected a constitutional challenge from a white Texas couple and Texas state attorneys who contended the federal law interfered with state adoption policies and gave preferences to tribal families that amounted to unconstitutional discrimination based on race.
"The bottom line is that we reject all of petitioners' challenges to the statute, some on the merits and others for lack of standing," Justice Amy Coney Barrett said for the court.
Justices Thomas Clarence and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented.
The law was defended by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary.
Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978 after it found "an alarmingly high percentage of Indian families are broken up by the removal, often unwarranted, of their children from them." These children were being raised instead in boarding schools or by non-Native families.
The law gave a role to tribal officials in arranging adoptions and called for placing Native children when possible with members of their extended family or their tribe or members of another tribe.
Tribal leaders described the law as the "gold standard in child welfare" and hailed the ruling upholding it.
"Today's decision is a major victory for Native tribes, children, and the future of our culture and heritage. It is also a broad affirmation of the rule of law, and of the basic constitutional principles surrounding relationships between Congress and tribal nations," said Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., speaking for other tribal leaders.
Haaland called the decision "a welcome affirmation" of the 1978 law following an era when federal policies had "promoted the removal of Indian children from their families" and "inflicted trauma on children, families and communities that people continue to feel today."
It was the second time in two weeks the court upheld an act of Congress against a conservative state's challenge involving race.
Last week, the justices upheld part of the Voting Rights Act that requires Alabama's Republican legislature to draw a new election district that might elect a Black candidate. Thursday's decision rejected the claim of Texas state attorneys that Congress could not interfere with state adoption proceedings and seek to place Indian children with tribal families.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote a 38-page concurring opinion on how the 1978 law followed a century in which Native American children were taken from their families and stripped of their culture and heritage.
"Often, Native American tribes have come to this court seeking justice only to leave with bowed heads and empty hands," he wrote. "But that is not because this court has no justice to offer them. Our Constitution reserves for the tribes a place — an enduring place — in the structure of American life."
Thomas wrote a 48-page dissent from last week's ruling on voting rights and a 40-page dissent on Thursday, arguing Congress "lacked any authority" to regulate state adoptions. In a separate dissent, Alito said Congress had wrongly subordinated "the best interest of a child" to the "best interest of a tribe."
The adoption preferences for keeping Indian children with tribal families were challenged as unconstitutional by Chad and Jennifer Brackeen, a Texas couple who had taken in two children shortly after their birth with the approval of their mother, who was a Navajo. Tribal authorities later tried to remove the children from the white family and send them instead to a Navajo couple who lived several hundred miles away.
The Brackeens sued and argued that decisions about adoptions should be based on the "best interest of the child" and should not give an overriding preference to tribal connections.
In its decision in Haaland vs. Brackeen, the court rejected the states-rights challenges to the law and said Congress had the authority to impose adoption rules for state proceedings. The justices also said the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue over the adoption preferences.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined the majority opinion, but said adoption preferences raise a "serious" question that remains unresolved.
