Fifth Circuit

The legal challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 40-year-old law passed to protect Native American families from child welfare system intrusion, has its next court date set. Oral arguments in the appeal of a federal district court decision to strike down most of ICWA is scheduled for the week of March 11 at the Fifth Circuit Court Appeals in New Orleans, according to counsel for one of the tribes involved in the case.

The Fifth District Court of Appeals has issued a stay in the case involving an October federal district court decision that struck down the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The decision means that states must follow ICWA at least until the court has decided on the case.

Several tribes have formally appealed last month’s decision in a federal district court that the 40-year-old Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is in part unconstitutional. In Brackeen v. Zinke, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled in favor of three states – Texas, Indiana and Louisiana – and several foster and adoptive couples, declaring that ICWA was a race-based law lacking a present-day articulation of its need.