This Day in History: April 16, 2013: Supreme Court hears ‘Baby Veronica’ custody case
Charleston-area custody fight centered on Indian Child Welfare Act and Cherokee father’s parental rights
WASHINGTON (WCSC) — On this day in 2013, a Charleston-area custody fight landed before the United States Supreme Court in Washington, DC, as justices heard oral arguments in the “Baby Veronica” case.
After an hour and a half of emotional arguments, the justices took up the battle over a 3-year-old girl whose South Carolina adoptive parents were fighting her Cherokee biological father for custody under the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Supporters on both sides watched as lawyers argued three key questions: whether her biological father, Dusten Brown, counted as a “parent” under the ICWA, whether the law only applied when there was already an Indian family in place and whether parts of the law were constitutional at all.
Two months later, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that several core ICWA protections did not apply to a non-custodial Native American father when the child had never lived with him and sent the case back to South Carolina. By that fall, after more legal wrangling in South Carolina and even Oklahoma, Baby Veronica was returned to her adoptive parents on James Island.
The case became one of the most closely watched custody and tribal rights cases in decades.
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