Baby Veronica

One Supreme Court case from last month that did not get much news coverage was the 5-4 decision in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, which addressed the thorny issue of adoptive parental rights versus biological parental rights.  Complicating the case further was the Federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) which came into play because the father of Baby Veronica was a member of the Cherokee Nation.  Family law is almost exclusively in the jurisdiction of state courts, which makes the case even more unique and influential. 

The heart of the case is centered around three year old Veronica Brown, who for the first two years of her life was raised by a couple from South Carolina who intended to adopt her.  However, her biological father who resides in Oklahoma and is registered with the Cherokee Nation, wanted custody and the right to raise his biological daughter.  The story is complex, but the Supreme Court ruled against the father and sent the custody case back to the South Carolina courts. 

 

Background Facts:  The biological mother of Baby Girl became pregnant but did not live with the father and he did not provide the mother financial support.  Dusten Brown, the father, claimed he tried to provide assistance but the mother refused.  Regardless of the why, Dusten Brown did not provide support financially.  The mother sent the father a text asking if he would rather pay child support or relinquish his rights, of which he chose the later.  However, while in court Brown testified he thought he was relinquishing his rights only to the mother.  The mother attempted to verify that the father was a member of the Cherokee Nation but spelled the father's name wrong and misrepresented his birthday on the request so the Nation could not locate the father's registration and therefore the mother listed the baby's race as "Hispanic" rather than "Native American" on the birth certificate (all mistakes were unintentional).  The mother decided to put Baby Girl up for adoption because she did not feel she was financially stable to support her new child her other two children she was already struggling to feed. 

 

Adoptive Couple, who resided in South Carolina began adoption proceedings in the state and the girl spent the first two years of her life with the couple as they moved closer to finalizing the adoption.  However, the Cherokee Nation eventually identified the biological father and filed a notice of intervention under the Federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).  ICWA was passed by Congress in 1978 with the main purpose of protecting Native American children and to help keep them with their American Indian families in response to an exceedingly high rate of child removal by federal and private agencies.  The father then stated he did not consent to the adoption and sought custody, and the trial court in South Carolina denied the Adoptive Couple's petition for adoption and granted custody to the biological father.  The trial court based their ruling on the ICWA and said the family did not follow proper procedure, even though the couple was not made aware to any issue with the biological father when they initiated adoption proceedings.  Baby Girl was subsequently removed from her home of two years and sent to live with her father in Oklahoma.

 

The Ruling:  The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Adoptive Couple but remanded the case, which means they struck down the South Carolina ruling based on the rationale used and asked them to look again.  The Supreme Court held that the ICWA was intended to stop the alarming practice of removing Indian children from Indian families "due to the cultural insensitivity and bias of social workers and state courts".  For this case however, the court found that the biological father had previously relinquished his rights and never had legal or physical custody of the child.  Therefore, since he never had custody of any kind and had relinquished his parental rights before birth, the ICWA's goal of preventing the breakup of Indian families did not apply and could not be enforced.  Furthermore, the court ruled that the ICWA's preferred path of placing the child in custody of another family members, the tribe or any other Indian family also did not apply because none came forward throughout the process.  Finally, the Supreme Court held that if the lower court's rationale was applied any Indian father would be able to play an "ICWA trump card" where he is able to override the wishes of the mother and the best interest of the child simply because of legal technicality.

 

The Supreme Court's decision did not end the legal battles since they remanded the case back to the South Carolina Supreme Court, and all parties involved had to wait for what the new ruling.  Yesterday, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in favor of Adoptive Couple based on the new criteria from the Supreme Court, and Baby Veronica will now be officially adopted by the South Carolina family and live out her childhood with them.