Credit: Library of CongressLast Tuesday the Supreme Court head oral argument
in the case of Adoptive Couple v. Baby, otherwise known as
the Baby Veronica dispute. The case developed when an unmarried
Oklahoma woman of Hispanic descent found herself pregnant by her
then-boyfriend, who had some Cherokee lineage but did not reside on
a reservation. Initially, the man consented to give up any rights
to the child, but then changed his mind on learning that the mother
intended to put the newborn up for adoption. At issue before the
Supreme Court is whether the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978
(ICWA) allows the father to block the adoption in order to prevent
the break-up of a putative Indian family. As Walter Olson observes,
the harder you dig into the premises behind ICWA, the more you
wonder why the law is handing out rights in domestic relations
conflicts based on race, lineage, and other grounds that are
ordinarily forbidden under our Constitution. 

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