Supreme Court sides with South Carolina couple against Oklahoma man in Cherokee adoption case

[The Straight Story]

Supreme Court sides with South Carolina couple against Oklahoma man in Cherokee adoption case
In a 5-4 decision, the high court ruled that a law intended to keep Indian families together doesn't automatically give custody to Cherokee father in Oklahoma

WASHINGTON — A federal law intended to keep Indian families together doesn't apply to a Cherokee father in Oklahoma who never had custody of his daughter before she was given to an adoptive couple in South Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

The 5-4 decision in the heart-rending case could mean that 3-year-old Veronica, who is now living with her father in Oklahoma, goes back to the custody of the South Carolina couple that raised her for the first 27 months of her life.

The high court's ruling turned mostly on a single phrase in the Indian Child Welfare Act — “continued custody.”

Since the biological father had relinquished his parental rights and didn't have legal or physical custody of the girl when he began his fight against the adoption, the federal law didn't protect his parental rights, the court ruled.

The Indian Child Welfare Act's primary goal of keeping Indian families together “is not implicated when an Indian child's adoption is voluntarily and lawfully initiated by a non-Indian parent with sole custodial rights,'' the court held.

http://newsok.com/supreme-court-sides-with-south-carolina-couple-in-cherokee-adoption-case/article/3856084