Is ICWA, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, unconstitutional, bad policy, both, or neither? Does it impermissibly hand out rights in domestic relations disputes based on forbidden grounds of race and lineage? My new Reason piece on SCOTUS’s adoption heartbreaker is now out. ICWA advocates have argued that the law should be read generously as an effort to remedy a long earlier history in which Indian kids had been improperly been taken out of their homes. More on the case: SCOTUSBlog (I recommend in particular the amicus brief on behalf of family law experts Joan Heifetz Hollinger and Elizabeth Bartholet), ABA, oral argument transcript. And for a viewpoint extremely different from mine, Matthew Fletcher and Kate Fort write up the case at the Indian law blog Turtle Talk (first, second).(& SCOTUSBlog, How Appealing)
Posts Tagged ‘adoption’
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl: the Court revisits ICWA
He signed his unwed-dad rights away by text message — then, when the girl was more than two years old, the baldly race-based Indian Child Welfare Act got them back for him. Today the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, otherwise known as the Baby Veronica case. [Washington Post, Michael Schearer, earlier here, here]
March 7 roundup
- Thank you, Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, for getting Obama’s claim of warrantless domestic killing authority onto the media front burner — finally — through Sen. Paul’s filibuster last night. (More: Nick Gillespie, Conor Friedersdorf and background, Andrew Sullivan, Josh Blackman; Mediaite (Eric Holder sends letter, Rand Paul declares victory).
- Pending SCOTUS case of “Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl” is not the first Indian Child Welfare Act fiasco [Ann Althouse] More on ICWA [NYT Room for Debate]
- Has ABA now enlisted in the crusade against Stand Your Ground self-defense laws? [ABA Journal] Reminder #371 that the Martin-Zimmerman case is not likely to hinge on Florida’s SYG law [Jacob Sullum; Jeralyn Merritt with more detail on latest developments]
- “Transparency in Government: Finding Out How Much the Government’s Mistakes Are Costing Us” [Hans von Spakovsky, Heritage]
- “New York, to Stem Civil-Rights Suits, Is Now Reluctant to Settle” [NY Times]
- CPSC adopts sweeping CPSIA testing and certification rule [Nancy Nord] Should the CPSC be structured as a multi-member commission? [Commissioner Nord at Cato’s Regulation magazine, PDF, and “Conversations with Consumers“]
- Illinois: “Small Town to Lose Its Only Sledding Hill” [Free-Range Kids]
- “Word of the day: Mendicant” [New York Times education blog; I’m quoted in]
Supreme Court roundup
- Court hears oral argument in Standard Fire Insurance Co. v. Knowles, the CAFA evasion case [transcript in PDF, Civil Procedure & Federal Courts Blog rounding up links, Federalist Society podcast with Brian Fitzpatrick, earlier here, here]
- Shelby County case invites SCOTUS to revisit Voting Rights Act [Ilya Shapiro, Cato; Eric Posner and Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Slate] But does Jeffrey Toobin understand the VRA? [Derek Muller, Prawfs]
- Speaking of that New Yorker writer, Toobin’s account of the Heller Second Amendment case is definitely not one for the history books [Tim Lynch, Cato]
- On gay marriage cases, jurisdiction/standing issues could leave Court fractured like Turkish taffy [Art Leonard] Best result for gays, argues Jonathan Rauch, might be narrow or mixed decision [TNR] Beyond the Court, idea of local option could offer national GOP a graceful retreat from its current untenable position [Carolyn Lochhead, San Francisco Chronicle quotes me arguing to that effect]
- SCOTUS asked to consider tribalism-trumps-adoption Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 [NYT]
- Despite amicus urgings from various good guys, Supreme Court declines to review Hettinga, the economic liberty case with the blazing Janice Rogers Brown/David Sentelle concurrence [Ilya Shapiro/Cato, Damon Root, Tim Sandefur/PLF, earlier here and here]
- Is the Sixth Circuit replacing the Ninth as perennial SCOTUS reversee? [Adler]
June 28 roundup
- Cato Institute settles lawsuit over its governance [Adler]
- As regulators crack down on payday lending, Indian tribes fill the gap [Business Week] Tribal leaders say they are at war with the CFPB, and no, there is no Elizabeth Warren angle [Kevin Funnell]
- “SEA LAWYER. A shark.” [1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue via Nancy Friedman]
- Trial lawyers in Oklahoma, as in Texas and Florida, endow slate of favored GOP candidates [Tulsa World]
- Simple reforms could ease path to more interstate adoptions of foster kids [Jeff Katz, Washington Post]
- “Can you say ‘overzealous service mark claimant’?” [@internetcases]
- “Today, anyone can sue anyone else, regardless of how ridiculous the claim may be. But it wasn’t always like this.” [Don Elliott, The Atlantic]
April 16 roundup
- Although I’m known as a foe of everything John Edwards stands for, I hope he beats this campaign finance rap [Atlantic Wire]
- Michael Bloomberg launches demagogic new campaign against Stand Your Ground laws, calling to mind the recent critique of the NYC mayor’s paternalist dark side by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic;
- Jerry Brown frees grandmother dubiously jailed in shaken-baby death [Slate, earlier]
- As Scruggs (Dickey not Earl) still pursues vindication, Alan Lange looks back on Mississippi scandals [YallPolitics]
- Deservedly favorable profile of Fifth Circuit judge Jerry Smith [NOLA]
- In which I tell off Bill Donohue’s Catholic League for its double insult last week to gays and to adoptive parents [IGF]
- “The Ninth Circuit was, believe it or not, correct” [Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus, Cato, on administrative law case arising from NLRB rules change on drug rep overtime]
March 6 roundup
- D.C. Circuit’s Janice Rogers Brown: three-decade-long case over Iran dairy expropriation raises “harshest caricature of the American litigation system” [BLT]
- Legal blogger Mark Bennett runs for Texas Court of Criminal Appeals as Libertarian [Defending People, Scott Greenfield] And Prof. Bill Childs, often linked in this space, is departing TortsProf (and legal academia) to join a private law practice in Texas;
- Ambitious damage claims, more modest settlements abound in Louisiana oil-rig cleanup suits [ATLA’s Judicial Hellholes, more, more, earlier]
- Better no family at all: Lawprof Banzhaf jubilant over courts’ denial of adoption to smokers [his press release]
- “The worst discovery request I’ve ever gotten” [Patrick at Popehat] And yours?
- Concession to reality? Class action against theater over high cost of movie snacks seen as dud [Detroit Free Press]
- FCPA is for pikers, K Street shows how real corruption gets done [Bill Frezza, Forbes] Dems threatening tax-bill retribution against clients whose lobbyists who back GOP candidates [Politico]
February 27 roundup
- Department of Transportation cracks down on distraction from cars’ onboard information and entertainment systems; Mike Masnick suspects the measure won’t work as intended, as appears to have been the case with early texting bans [Techdirt; earlier here, etc.] “Feds Push New York Toward Full Ban On Electronic Devices In Cars” [Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit; Truth About Cars]
- Oh no: Scott Greenfield says he’s ceasing to post at his exemplary criminal defense blog after five years [Simple Justice, Dave Hoffman]
- California not entitled to pursue its own foreign policy, at least when in conflict with rest of nation’s: unanimous “blockbuster” decision by en banc 9th Circuit strikes down law enabling insurance suits by Armenian victims [AP, Alford/OJ, Recorder, related, Frank/PoL]
- Playboy model’s $1.2M award against Gotham cops is a great day for the tabloids [NYDN]
- To hear a pitch for fracking-royalty suits, visit the American Association for Justice convention, or just read the New York Times [Wood, PoL]
- What the mortgage settlement did [John Cochrane, earlier]
- Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 blows up an adoption: “She’s a 2-year-old girl who got shoved in a truck and driven to Oklahoma with strangers.” [Reuters, SaveVeronica.org]