Goldwater Institute asks Supreme Court to review Native child welfare case

The Goldwater Institute and attorneys Mark Fiddler and Jeff Markowitz filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Minnesota child welfare case involving the Indian Child Welfare Act and the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act, according to a May 5 write-up on the institute’s website by Timothy Sandefur, the vice president for legal affairs at the institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation. 

The case involves twins born in 2022 who were placed with a foster family after spending more than a month in intensive care. According to Sandefur, the children were later moved to live with a relative on the Red Lake Nation Reservation because they are eligible for tribal membership. The institute argues that ICWA and Minnesota’s state law create different legal standards in child welfare cases involving Native children. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled against the foster family, according to Sandefur, who wrote that the petition argues the laws are “unconstitutionally race-based” and that excluding the foster family from participating in the case violated constitutional due process protections.