The US supreme court has ruled that Native American children can continue to be protected under federal law against being removed from their tribal communities for fostering or adoption, rejecting a petition from a white couple who argued that the provision was a form of racial discrimination.
Gorsuch is a mixed bag at best on a lot of issues, but he has been as good as anyone could expect on Indigenous issues. Check out his concurrence in this case (starting on PDF page 43), which straightforwardly grapples with the history of forced family separations and residential schools.
This is unexpectedly good news
Not necessarily. I think it’s more important that a child be placed with a loving family rather than that they be placed with someone that happens to share a lot of genes or a cultural heritage with their ancestors, and this court case says that those latter factors can override the former. It’s complicated.
If I understand correctly, the opinion explicitly focuses on Indian tribes as nations – i.e. legal entities – not races.
