U.S. Supreme Court Makes Rare Family Law Ruling in Adoption Case
Usually, the U.S. Supreme Court does not make decisions regarding family law issues like divorce, custody, adoption and the like. Instead, those important issues are usually left to the purview of the state courts. Occasionally, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a family law case as it did recently in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl et al, U. S. Supreme Court, No 12-399, a heart-wrenching case concerning a birth father’s attempts to overturn an adoption based on his status as a Native American. In its ruling, the Court addressed the reach of “ICWA,” the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted in 1978 to help counteract the high rates of Native American children being adopted away from their tribes and culture. In its ruling, the Court threw out the state court’s decision awarding custody to the father and returned the case to the state court for further processing, leaving the original adoption still up in the air and in the hands of the state court.