Adoption Case Brings Rare Family Law Dispute to High Court : NPR
Not so, say the tribes. They see the case as an attempt to undo the protections that Congress established in the face of evidence that states were trampling on the rights of Native American parents. “Congress decided it had to step in,” says Rothfeld, and it did so by creating “special federal rules superseding state custody rules that would govern where Indian child custody was at stake.”
The case also is about the autonomy of a non-Indian mother. The birth mother’s lawyer, Lori Alvino McGill, contends that if Indian fathers can sweep in this way, based only on biology, and override the birth mother’s decision, why couldn’t sperm donors or rapists who are Indian do the same? “No other set of men can choose to kind of sit back, renounce all responsibility but hold a back-pocket veto to an adoption choice,” she says.
The guardian ad litem, represented by lawyer Paul Clement, scathingly says there is “no box” like the one Dusten Brown is seeking to check.
“Generally you’re not allowed to say, ‘Well, look, I don’t really want to give you any financial support, I don’t really want to have much to do with this child, but I do really want you, person I’ve just gotten pregnant, I want you to take care of this child, and I don’t want you to do something like give up this child for adoption,’ ” he says.
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