Image from GoFundMe page for family
An institute that already is legally challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act for being racist and imposing “a separate and disadvantageous system of rules for people of a particular ancestry” is pleading with the California Supreme Court to immediately return 6-year-old Lexi to the only parents she’s ever known.
“Time is of the essence,” says a new court filing submitted to the state’s highest court by the Goldwater Institute.
The organization has filed a lawsuit challenging the ICWA as unconstitutional and now has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Lexi. Her story burst into the headlines a week ago when social workers took the crying, resisting child away from her Santa Clarita, California, foster family, Rusty and Summer Page, with whom she has lived since she was little over a year old.
The Pages have been trying to adopt Lexi for nearly five years.
The federal law gives Indian tribes the authority to determine the placement of children in social services care if they have any Native American blood. Lexi is 1.5 percent, or 1/64th, Indian.
The state government had removed the girl from her biological parents because of their drug abuse and criminal histories. Her father, who reportedly is eligible for tribal membership, later cut off attempts at reunification, and her mother reportedly lost custody of at least six other children. The girl was placed with the Pages, who have become known to her as “mommy” and “daddy.”
Social evaluators already warned the court that removing her from the Pages “would be potentially traumatic,” causing her to suffer “depression and anxiety.” But they went ahead, and the Choctaw tribe put Lexi a thousand miles away with her step-grandfather’s niece.
The institute’s brief to Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and the associate justices pleads for immediate help for the little girl. Short of a tribal decision to relinquish its interest in the case, which appears unlikely, a court ruling could be the only way to relieve Lexi of her ongoing deprivation of contact with the foster family.
The Pages have asked the state Supreme Court for temporary custody so that Lexi can return to those she considers family.
“This court should grant the requested relief, stall all proceedings, and hear the full constitutional matter on the merits as rapidly as possible,” the Goldwater brief explains.
“Even one year is an eternity in a child’s life. Resolution of ICWA’s constitutionality has been postponed for decades. During that time, countless children have been subjected to its separate and unequal legal standards. It is ‘intolerable’ that this ‘dual system’ of race-based classifications is allowed to persist.”
The brief continues: “This case cries out for extraordinary relief and a full consideration of the merits. Laws that establish a separate and disadvantageous system of rules for people of a particular ancestry – rules that deny them the protections afforded to people of any other race – are ‘illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, inherently wrong, and destructive of democratic society.’”
It outlines the key issue: “The petition asks this court to stay the abrupt and meritless removal and placement of the minor Lexi P. and to review the merits of the case, and particularly to consider whether ICA and affiliated state statutes … are constitutional.
“These are matters of pressing importance nationwide, and particularly in California, where lack of guidance from this court has led to substantial uncertainty as to the constitutionality of ICWA’s rules for adoption and foster care – rules that deprive Indian children of the legal protections afford to all other children in the United States, and do so exclusively on the basis of their race.”
What do YOU think? Sound off on the case of Lexi, a 6-year-old girl taken from her family
Reprising arguments from its pending federal lawsuit in Arizona, the institute argues ICWA “subjects children of one particular race to a separate and disadvantageous set of legal rules.”
“This case presents a vivid and heart-rending example of the problems arising from a 40-year-old statute that, as the U.S. Supreme Court recently observed, ‘put[s] certain vulnerable children at a great disadvantage solely because an ancestor – even a remote one – was an Indian.’”
The institute continued: “Lexi is 1/64th Choctaw, and has only the remotest connection to any Indian tribe. Yet pursuant to ICWA, she has been taken away from the loving foster family with whom she has lived for 2/3rds of her life, and sent to live with non-Indian non-relatives in another state – solely as a consequence of her race.”
Lexi’s closest full-blooded Indian relative is a “great-great-great-great grandparent,” the institute explains.
That means she is subjected to the “ICWA Penalty Box,” which applies to “no child who is white, black, Hispanic, Asian” or any other race, the institute said.
She is being denied decisions based on the “best interests of the child,” the basis of child custody laws.
Children under the ICWA, the institute explained, are subjected to custody and other decisions “irrelevant to a child’s individual needs and circumstances.” They are subject to “the personal jurisdiction of Indian tribal authorities anywhere in the nation,” deprived of freedom of association rights, and left unprotected against abuse and neglect.
The institute pointedly noted that in Lexi’s case, the ICWA is being used “in a manner that does not even achieve its statutory objective of preserving tribal integrity.”
“In [a previous case], the U.S. Supreme Court found that it would ‘raise equal protection concerns’ if ICWA were used to ‘override … child’s best interests’ and take a child from a caring home ‘at the eleventh hour’ simply ‘because an ancestor – even a remote one – was an Indian,’” the brief noted.
“This is that case. Lexi’s race has been used as the sole determinative factor in taking her from secure custody with the family she has lived with for 2/3rds of her life – custody to which the tribe at one time agreed – and placing her with a non-Indian family in another state, which has no evident connection with an Indian tribe,” the institute wrote.
“We ended race-based discrimination 50 years ago in the country. But not for Native American children,” said Timothy Sandefur, vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute. “ICWA subjects Native American children to separate and substandard considerations in adoption and foster care cases. It is harder to remove them from abusive situations and it is harder to keep them in safe and loving homes than it is for children of any other race.”
He continued, “While it is important to protect the culture and heritage of Native American tribes, the desires of a tribe should never trump the best interests of a child.”
‘Very hard’
The foster parents talked about the situation on Monday.
“It’s been very hard, very emotional, very confusing,” Summer Page told Fox Business.
Rusty Page said their three other children, who considered Lexi their sibling, have not been doing well.
Asked whether they were allowed to talk to Lexi, Rusty said, “Not right now, no.”
He said he hopes for that in the future.
“If this is about her best interest, they would let us,” he said.
Tribe’s ‘no comment’
Tribal officials multiple times have declined to respond to WND requests for comment, but on FridayWND reported that the tribe was blasting the foster family for doing “nothing but delay” the case and turning it into a political cause.
“It appears the foster family and their counsel are attempting to turn Lexi’s case into a political call to arms to dismantle ICWA,” the tribe charged in an unsigned statement posted online. “For the Choctaw Nation this case is not about politics. This case is about one of our children, one of our tribal members.”
The tribe said the ICWA “requires Lexi be given the chance to grow up with her family, with her sisters.”
“The California courts, time and again, found that Lexi should live with her family. The Pages have done nothing but delay Lexi’s reunification with her family.”
‘Traumatized’
WND previously reported that one of the social workers assigned to Lexi’s case said the little girl is “traumatized” because of the removal from her home.
WND reported Lauren Axline of Valencia, California, posted a comment on a page promoting a petition to return Lexi to her foster family.
“I was the foster social worker on this case for 3.5 yrs, and I can speak of the deceptive, crooked, and destructive things the ICWA (Indian Child Protection Act) social workers and lawyers have done that are NOT in the best interest of this child or her future,” Axline wrote. “I can also speak of the amazing Page family and how they have loved on Lexi from day one and how much Lexi is truly a part of their family.
“They took a scared 2-year-old who didn’t know a parent from a stranger and helped form this beautiful, silly, confident, loving, stable little 6 yr old by the love and nurture they provided for her in their home the last 4.5 yrs.”
Then Axline expanded on her comments in an interview with the London Daily Mail.
What do YOU think? Sound off on the case of Lexi, a 6-year-old girl taken from her family
The Mail reported Axline described the Native American unit of the Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services as “deceptive” and “crooked.” Axline said she believes the agency handling Lexi’s case “hid” key facts and overlooked “damning” visitation reports.
Axline said that as a foster agency, we “report what we find in each child’s case to the county, and the county is supposed to take that information to the courts.”
“But we were reporting the different instances in Lexi’s case that were really concerning us, things that were concerning me as the social worker working the case, but they weren’t passed on. I’m talking visitations with the Utah family during which Lexi was an absolute mess. The DCFS would tell her that she would have to have a visit, and she would go ballistic and she would go crying and crying, and when she would come back from a visit it would take her days and days to get back into her normal routine and behaviors,” she said.
She told the Mail: “Instead of writing, she was ‘hysterically crying,’ as I told them, they would put, ‘Lexi had such a fun time at Disneyland when they went; she was smiling and laughing.’ It was completely deceptive.”
‘Child sacrifice’
On its website, the Goldwater Institute recounts the case of Laurynn Whiteshield and her sister, Michaela.
“Laurynn spent most of her life in a home where she was loved and protected. From the time she was nine months old, she and her twin sister, Michaela, were raised by Jeanine Kersey-Russell, a Methodist minister and third-generation foster parent in Bismarck, North Dakota. When the twins were almost three years old, the county sought to make them available for adoption. But Laurynn and Michaela were not ordinary children.
“They were Indians.
“And because they were Indians, their fates hinged on the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law passed in 1978 to prevent the breakup of Indian families and to protect tribal interests in child welfare cases.
“The Spirit Lake Sioux tribe had shown no interest in the twins while they were in foster care. But once the prospect of adoption was raised, the tribe invoked its powers under ICWA and ordered the children returned to the reservation, where they were placed in the home of their grandfather in May 2013.
“Thirty-seven days later, Laurynn was dead, thrown down an embankment by her grandfather’s wife, who had a long history of abuse, neglect, endangerment, and abandonment involving her own children,” the report says.
It quotes William Allen of the Coalition for the Protection of Indian Children and Families, who is a critic of the law.
“I would go so far as to call the legislation a policy of child sacrifice in the interests of the integrity of the Indian tribes, meaning the end has nothing to do with the children,” Allen said. “It has everything to do with the tribe. To build tribal integrity, tribal coherence, the law was passed in spite of the best interests of the children.”
Significant damage
The damage to a 6-year-old ripped from the only parents she’s known can be significant, according to Cheryl Chumley, a court-appointed special advocate and author of the new “The Devil in D.C.: Winning Back the Country from the Beast in Washington.”
“This is a perfect example of the damage that government can do when it gets involved in matters it doesn’t belong,” she said. “Tearing this little girl away from the only home she’s ever known is a travesty – and it’s a big black mark on government.
“As a CASA, a court-appointed special advocate, I help judges make the difficult decision of where abused and neglected children should ultimately live. And I can tell you, ripping children from a home where they’ve grown, where they’ve thrived and where they’ve lived with family is an upsetting process, at best – a mentally and psychologically damaging occurrence at worst. By all accounts, Lexi was thriving in her present home, but now, because of government policy, she may have to go live with strangers, in an entirely new state.
“God help us if this is what government can do, without barely blinking an eye.”
‘Devastated’ family
“Our family is so incredibly devastated,” Rusty Page said in a Facebook statement. “But nobody could possibly be more devastated than our 6-year-old daughter who found herself restrained in a car and driven away to go and live in a foreign place hundreds of miles from her family, friends, teachers, home and life.”
A measure of the public’s interest can be assessed at a GoFundMe page, where more than $41,000 has been raised for the family’s effort in just three days, and Change.org, where 113,000 people have signed a petition. At the outset, for a time, the signatures were coming in at a rate of one per second.
The case has overtones of the “Baby Veronica” case from several years ago.
The infant was placed with foster parents who wanted to adopt her, but an Oklahoma tribe demanded that she be removed and given a single parent. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the tribal action, and a lower court allowed the foster family to keep custody.
Matt and Melanie Capobianco adopted “Baby Veronica” from an Oklahoma woman and had custody for 27 months in South Carolina before courts ordered custody transferred to Veronica’s biological father, Dusten Brown.
The case centered on claims of the Cherokee tribe.
Follow the progress of the case on the GoFundMe and change.org sites.
Concerned individuals may contact the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma or call 1-800-522-6170.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/urgent-pleas-to-california-supremes-to-help-lexi-now/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/urgent-pleas-to-california-supremes-to-help-lexi-now/
No comments:
Post a Comment