Supreme court justices uphold protections for Native American children in win for Indigenous rights - live
From 7m ago 10.11 EDT Supreme court rejects challenges to law meant to keep Native American children in communities The supreme court has turned down a challenge to a law that keeps Native American children in their communities for fostering and adoption. Here’s more on the decision, from the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington: The US supreme court has ruled that Native American children can continue to be protected under federal law against being removed from their tribal communities for fostering or adoption, rejecting a petition from a white couple who argued that the provision was a form of racial discrimination. The supreme court’s decision in a case that ultimately pitched the Brackeen family of Texas against the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, for the US government, amounts to a victory for hundreds of tribal groups. They had united to call for a retention of the law which requires Native children to be placed as a priority within their own extended families, tribes or other Native communities. They argued that the status quo was essential for the survival of tribes themselves. The decision preserves the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Since it was enacted in 1978 the law has helped stabilize Native American families and uphold tribal sovereignty. US supreme court upholds protections for Native American children Read more
Updated at 10.12 EDT
2m ago 10.16 EDT Last year, the Guardian’s Cecilia Nowell took a deep dive into the Indian Child Welfare Act, which the supreme court just upheld. Here’s more about what the law does, and why it was challenged: When Kimora Toledo was a little girl, she and her mother Malisha would make the hour-long drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jemez Pueblo at least once a month. Malisha, who is from Jemez and Tesuque Pueblos, had moved her family to Albuquerque for a better job, but her father was a Jemez medicine man and it was important to her that Kimora be immersed in that heritage. On one of those visits to Jemez, Malisha remembers dancing alongside Kimora – who’s Jemez, Tesuque, Diné and Black – during the feast day celebrations. She hoped it would be the first of many times they’d dance together. But Malisha battled a criminal record and her ex, Kimora’s father, managed to gain custody over Kimora and her younger brother. The two children would spend several years living at their dad’s house in Albuquerque, without those monthly visits to the pueblo. When Kimora was 11, the New Mexico children, youth and families department removed her from her father’s home over abuse she was experiencing. Kimora would spend the next three years in and out of group homes and rehabilitation centers, eventually landing in foster care when she asked not to be returned to her father’s. Kimora had never felt more disconnected from her culture and traditional ways of healing. Her foster mother, a Mexican woman, suggested Kimora take Spanish as an elective in school. But Kimora desperately missed her mother and grandfather, and the language they’d spoken during her childhood. “I missed a lot of my childhood and our traditions,” she said, just weeks before her seventeenth birthday. For decades, welfare laws kept Native American families together. Will the supreme court end them? Read more
7m ago 10.11 EDT Supreme court rejects challenges to law meant to keep Native American children in communities The supreme court has turned down a challenge to a law that keeps Native American children in their communities for fostering and adoption. Here’s more on the decision, from the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington: The US supreme court has ruled that Native American children can continue to be protected under federal law against being removed from their tribal communities for fostering or adoption, rejecting a petition from a white couple who argued that the provision was a form of racial discrimination. The supreme court’s decision in a case that ultimately pitched the Brackeen family of Texas against the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, for the US government, amounts to a victory for hundreds of tribal groups. They had united to call for a retention of the law which requires Native children to be placed as a priority within their own extended families, tribes or other Native communities. They argued that the status quo was essential for the survival of tribes themselves. The decision preserves the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Since it was enacted in 1978 the law has helped stabilize Native American families and uphold tribal sovereignty. US supreme court upholds protections for Native American children Read more
Updated at 10.12 EDT
21m ago 09.57 EDT Supreme court to release decisions We’re a few minutes away from 10am eastern time, when the supreme court is slated to begin releasing its latest batch of decisions. We won’t know which decisions they release until they are out, but there are 21 cases left to decide, including closely watched petitions dealing with affirmative action, congressional redistricting and Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student loan debt – all issues the court’s conservative majority could decide to majorly change. Follow along here as the decisions are released.
Updated at 10.07 EDT
49m ago 09.29 EDT Donald Trump refused to negotiate with prosecutors after classified documents found - report Earlier this week, Americans watched as Donald Trump appeared in federal court to answer the first-ever indictment brought against a former president. But it all might have been avoided if he had taken the advice of one of the attorneys he hired after the FBI retrieved boxes of classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago property last August, the Washington Post reports. According to their story, Christopher Kise, a former Florida solicitor general Trump retained after the search of his resort last year, suggested that he approve opening under-the-radar negotiations with the justice department to resolve potential charges related to his possession of government secrets, but the former president refused. Here’s more from the story: One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department. The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents. But Trump was not interested after listening to other lawyers who urged a more pugilistic approach, so Kise never approached prosecutors, three people briefed on the matter said. A special counsel was appointed months later. Kise, a former solicitor general of Florida who was paid $3 million upfront to join Trump’s team last year, declined to comment. That quiet entreaty last fall was one of many occasions when lawyers and advisers sought to get Trump to take a more cooperative stance in a bid to avoid what happened Friday. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment including more than three dozen criminal counts against Trump for allegedly keeping and hiding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. Trump, 77, now faces the most legally perilous moment of his life playing out in a federal court — charges that could bring decades in prison. He pleaded not guilty in Miami on Tuesday and vowed to fight the charges. “President Trump has consistently been in full compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which is the only law that applies to Presidents and their records,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “In the course of negotiations over the return of the documents, President Trump told the lead DOJ official, ‘anything you need from us, just let us know.’ Sadly, the weaponized DOJ rejected this offer of cooperation and conducted an unnecessary and unconstitutional raid on the President’s home in order to inflict maximum political damage on the leading presidential candidate.”
1h ago 09.09 EDT Supreme court decision could have major impacts in fight for Congress The supreme court could today issue a decision in a case with big implications for how legislative maps are drawn nationwide, potentially impacting the balance of power as Republicans and Democrats vie for control of Congress in the 2024 elections. The case is Moore v Harper, which comes out of North Carolina and deals with the ability of state courts to strike down congressional maps drawn by their legislatures. Here’s what the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington wrote about the case, when justices heard arguments in December: Republicans from North Carolina who brought the case argue that a provision of the US constitution known as the elections clause gives state lawmakers virtually total control over the “times, places and manner” of congressional elections, including redistricting, and cuts state courts out of the process. The Republicans are advancing a concept called the “independent state legislature theory”, never before adopted by the supreme court but cited approvingly by four conservative justices. The direction of questioning at Wednesday’s hearing suggested that three of those conservative justices – Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas – were open to the idea of adopting the theory, despite decades of precedent from their own court dismissing it. They seemed to have the slightly more tentative backing of Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the legal team in 2000 that assisted George W Bush through Bush v Gore, the case that in modern times put the independent state legislature theory on the map. On the other side of the argument, the three liberal-leaning justices were profoundly critical of the notion that state legislatures should be given free rein to control federal elections virtually unrestrained by state constitutions and judicial review from state courts. Questions from John Roberts suggested he might be seeking a more narrowly-drawn compromise position. Which left all eyes on Amy Coney Barrett, the third of Donald Trump’s three appointees. Potentially, she might find herself casting the decisive vote. Though it gives little clue as to which side of the fence Barrett will be standing on when the ruling comes down, she did ask several probing questions of the lawyer representing North Carolina’s Republicans. She said that those pushing for state legislatures to be freed up from oversight had a “problem” defining their terms, and she questioned whether the theory had any bearing in legal text. But after that hearing, a twist emerged: the North Carolina supreme court reversed itself in the issue that had been brought before the US supreme court, leading to a split in the parties that brought the case over whether the issue is moot. There’s speculation that the supreme court will end up not ruling on the matter at all, though some court watchers believe that, if they were going to do that, it would have happened already. It’s a complicated issue that, again, could have major impacts on control of Congress, one of the most important political battles out there. Here’s more from Scotusblog on the late developments in the case: The lawyers involved in a major election law case once again disagreed on Thursday about whether the Supreme Court has the power to reach a decision in the case in light of a ruling last month by the North Carolina Supreme Court in the underlying dispute. Three sets of challengers and the Biden administration, which filed a “friend of the court” brief supporting the challengers, urged the justices to dismiss the case. But a group of Republican legislators, who prevailed in the new state supreme court ruling, insisted that the justices should go ahead and decide the case – a view shared by Common Cause, one of the group’s opponents. In December, the justices heard argument in Moore v. Harper, in which a group of Republican legislators from North Carolina argued that the “independent state legislature theory” – the idea that the Constitution’s elections clause gives state legislatures nearly unfettered authority to regulate federal elections – barred the North Carolina Supreme Court from setting aside a congressional map adopted by the state’s legislature. But late last month, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed its earlier ruling, holding that it does not have the power to review the challenges to the map at all. The North Carolina Supreme Court’s April 28 decision prompted the Supreme Court to request additional briefing on the impact of that decision. In a four-page brief filed on Thursday afternoon, the Biden administration told the justices that they should dismiss the case. The Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar explained, granted review to decide whether the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause bars state courts from considering whether the redistricting map enacted by the North Carolina legislature violates the North Carolina constitution. The question, Prelogar continued, comes to the court in the context of the challengers’ claims that the new congressional map adopted by the state legislature violated the state constitution’s ban on partisan gerrymandering. But the North Carolina Supreme Court threw out those claims last month, Prelogar noted, holding that there is no role under the North Carolina constitution for state courts to consider partisan gerrymandering claims. Therefore, Prelogar reasoned, a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the “independent state legislature” theory would have no effect on the challengers’ claims.
Source: The Guardian
