Paxton Sues Feds Over Native American Adoption Law

AUSTIN, TX — The Texas attorney general has sued the federal government, seeking to challenge the Indian Child Welfare Act designed to prevent Native American children from being separated from their families.

Ken Paxton filed his lawsuit last week in federal court, arguing the ICWA passed in 1978 is unconstitutional and should be struck down. The attorney general filed the lawsuit on behalf of a Caucasian couple seeking to adopt a Native American boy.

“I’m suing the federal government today to protect the best interest of Texas children,” Paxton said in a prepared statement. “The Constitution makes clear that people are more than just their racial background. But ICWA elevates a child’s race over their best interest in a way that could endanger Texas children. Such an unconstitutional and dangerous law cannot stand.”

Paxton is suing on behalf of Chad and Jennifer Brackeen, foster parents with two biological children of their own who've been blocked from adopting a two-year-old Native American boy they've fostered for more than a year given ICWA's provisions. In the Brackeens case, the law dictates that the boy live with an "...unknown Indian family from New Mexico," according to Paxton's lawsuit.

The attorney general claims the boy's biological parents and grandmother support the would-be adoption. The suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has among the defendants Ryan Zinke, the U.S. interior secretary whose department is tasked with implementing the adoption law.

“The Indian Child Welfare Act is unconstitutional, discriminatory and invades every aspect of Texas family law as applied to Native American children,” Paxton told the court. “It coerces state agencies and courts to carry out unconstitutional and illegal federal policy, and make child custody decisions based on racial preferences.”

Paxton's challenge to the Native American adoption law isn't the first time it's been contested. A 2013 Oklahoma case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled a biological father had not parental rights to his three-year-old daughter because he abandoned her before birth, thus negating his custody.

To read Paxton's lawsuit, click here.

>>> Photo via State of Texas