Supreme Court struggles with a case dealing with the rights of Native American Tribes

. But the tribes and the U.S. government countered that the courts have long considered American Indians to be a political group, not a racial group.

Like several other justices, he said the objections to ICWA in reality are objections to the policy choices that Congress adopted in the law. Your arguments"are better addressed across the street," he said. Meaning, that if some people don't like the law, they should go to Congress, not to the courts.

Justice Elena Kagan noted that ICWA was enacted for a particular purpose--namely to protect the tribes very existence at a time when huge numbers of Native children were being taken, often by force, from their tribal homes. But several conservative justices noted that the court would not, and has not, accepted laws that ban children from being adopted by parents of a different race. That, they noted would be a clear case of race discrimination.

Those challenging ICWA maintained that Congress cannot legislate for American Indians who do not live on a reservation. That prompted Justice Gorsuch to observe that in the West, American Indians live on a"checkerboard" of land, with many on reservations, and their Indian neighbors living close by, though not on reservations.

Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler said the purpose of ICWA is to prevent children from being taken away from their"families, from their extended families, from their tribes and their kin."

It’s weird to me when there seems to be a fairly clear precedent (Alaskans-who were never given treaties) where children were clearly separated from other groups by nonpolitical markers, such as “and children of mixed blood” in Nielsen Act of 1905.

pdeppisch

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Justice Elena Kagan noted that ICWA was enacted for a particular purpose--namely to protect the tribes very existence at a time when huge numbers of Native children were being taken, often by force, from their tribal home.

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