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When, a decade ago, I was a graduate student toiling away on my dissertation, I could not have imagined that Justice Clarence Thomas would one day devote a lengthy footnote in a Supreme Court opinion to arguing why my obscure historical research was wrong. But that is what happened in the Court’s recent decision in Haaland v. Brackeen. By a 7–2 vote, the court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)—a critical federal law that provides procedural protections for Native children when their parents are unable to care for them—against a long-standing campaign begun by right-wing think tanks to overturn it.
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Unfortunately, Brackeen doesn’t fully end that campaign against ICWA, which has been going on longer than I’ve been an academic. The conservative organizations behind the case have already pledged to find new plaintiffs to bring the equal protection claims that the court avoided on standing grounds—litigation that Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s (lone) concurrence invites. But Brackeen is still a hugely significant, and critical, victory. The Brackeens and Texas brought a laundry list of constitutional challenges to...
The court found the relator did not allege specific reimbursement requests or facts linking challenged promotional statements to government payments. A Maryland federal district court dismissed a ...