Court case ignores what is important

Published 10:36 pm Thursday, June 27, 2013

There were no winners in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on “Baby Veronica.” Although the court said in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl that the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 doesn’t apply to the 3-year-old girl, the child isn’t going back to the adoptive parents. Nor is her place with her birth father assured.

Instead, her fate will be decided by lower courts only after a new round of custody hearings and decisions.

What’s lost in the tragic politicization of a child’s life is the view of adoption as a great good.

“A divided Supreme Court said Tuesday that federal law doesn’t require that a Native American child be taken away from her adoptive parents and given to her biological father,” the Associated Press reports. “The justices’ 5-4 decision came in a case about a federal law intended to keep Indian children from being taken from their homes and typically placed with non-Indian adoptive or foster parents. South Carolina courts said the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act favored the biological father of the girl, named Veronica. But the South Carolina couple who raised her for the first 27 months of her life appealed that decision.”

The facts of the case are heartbreaking.

The father, Dusten Brown, is a member of the Cherokee Nation. He wasn’t married to the birth mother, and in fact signed away his parental rights rather than pay child support. He never even saw the child — until he heard she was to be put up for adoption.

The adoptive parents, meanwhile, traveled from South Carolina to Oklahoma for the girl’s birth. They did everything that was required of them legally.

It wasn’t until four months after they returned home that Brown filed for custody, setting off a legal battle that would pit advocates of tribal rights and heritage against groups promoting adoption.

The case got political very quickly. And with the South Carolina court’s ruling in favor of the biological father, the little girl’s world was upended.

The Supreme Court decision just makes it worse. And no one is happy with it — not the adoption group and not the tribal attorneys.

“The Court misses the core concept behind ICWA — which is to protect the cultural resource and treasure that are Indian children,” says Chris Stearns, a Navaho lawyer. “It’s not about protecting so-called traditional or nuclear families. It’s about recognizing the prevalence of extended families and culture.”

But it shouldn’t be. It should be about a little girl, who lived with her adoptive family for more than two years, then with her biological father for 18 months. Where she goes now is uncertain.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor is right; “the anguish this case has caused will only be compounded by today’s decision.”

What should have happened?

Everyone involved — the biological father, the advocacy groups and the attorneys — should have considered, first, the stability and happiness of this little girl.

Adoption is under fire lately, with some calling it “cultural imperialism.” But it’s about providing homes to children. And that’s more important than political agendas.