Among the controversial opinions published last week by the Supreme Court, we found that the Court’s opinion in the case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, 570 U.S. ____ (2013), referred to legislative history materials. A baby girl who was classified as a native American Indian because of her biological father’s Cherokee heritage, was removed from her adopted family when the baby girl was a few months old because her father, who had attempted to relinquish his parental rights and had no prior contact with the child, asserted his parental right under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), 25 USC § § 1901 through 1963. The ICWA was enacted in the mid-1970’s to stem abusive child welfare practices that resulted in the separation of large numbers of Indian children from their families and tribes through adoption or foster care placement in non-Indian homes.
The Court ruled against the biological father’s claim that the ICWA had been violated when the baby girl was adopted by the non-Indian couple. In reviewing legislative intent, Justice Alito, writing for the majority, stated:
Our reading of §1912(f) comports with the statutory text demonstrating that the primary mischief the ICWA was designed to counteract was the unwarranted removal of Indian children from Indian families due to the cultural insensitivity and biases of social workers and state courts. The statutory text expressly highlights the primary problem that the statute was intended to solve: “an alarmingly high percentage of Indian families [were being] broken up by the removal, often unwarranted, of their children from them by nontribal public and private agencies.” [citations omitted] And if the legislative history of the ICWA is thought to be relevant, it further underscores that the Act was primarily intended to stem the unwarranted removal of Indian children from intact Indian families. See, e.g., H. R. Rep. No. 95-1386, p. 8 (1978) (explaining that, as relevant here, “[t]he purpose of [the ICWA] is to protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families by establishing minimum Federal standards for the removal of Indian children from their families and the placement of such children in foster or adoptive homes” (emphasis added)); id., at 9 (decrying the “wholesale separation of Indian children” from their Indian families); id., at 22 (discussing “the removal” of Indian children from their parents pursuant to §§ 1912(e) and (f)). In sum, when, as here, the adoption of an Indian child is voluntarily and lawfully initiated by a non-Indian parent with sole custodial rights, the ICWA’s primary goal of preventing the unwarranted removal of Indian children and the dissolution of Indian families is not implicated. (See Court Opinion, pages 9 and 10)
The above-noted House Report document is among the many types of legislative history materials we collect for federal legislative intent research. Visit our website to learn more about LIS’ federal legislative history research.
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