Mississippi Today
Mississippi Choctaws celebrate high court ruling on tribal sovereignty
The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians has joined the celebration of a victory handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a 1978 law that aims to keep together Native American children and their families and support tribal sovereignty.
“This is an important win for tribal sovereignty and for tribal children,” Tribal Chief Cyrus Ben said in a Friday statement. “Protecting the welfare of our children is essential to the survival of our language, culture, and traditions.”
The court ruled 7 to 2 Thursday in Brackeen v. Haaland, which centered on whether the Indian Child Welfare Act was constitutional. The act governs child custody of Native children.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion and was joined by six other justices, while
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., dissented.
“By now, the full picture has come into view and it is easy to see why ICWA must stand,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion. “Under our Constitution, Tribes remain independent sovereigns responsible for governing their own affairs.”
If Native American children are removed from their parents, the act sets preferences to place them with other family members, other members of the tribe or a different tribe.
The case was brought by a white foster couple from Texas, Chad and Jennifer Brackeen, against five tribes and the U.S. Department of the Interior over the adoption of American children. The couple was able to adopt one Native American child, because the Navajo Nation was unable to find a Navajo family to take him. The couple then tried to adopt the boy's sister, but the girl's extended family wanted to take her in. Two other non-Native American couples, who adopted Native American children even after challenges from the tribes where the children were eligible for membership, joined the lawsuit along with three states.
The plaintiff families said the law discriminated against non-Native families and the children they wanted to adopt on the basis of race.
ICWA recognizes that tribes have sovereignty and exclusive jurisdiction over their members who live on tribal land or are domiciled there.
During oral arguments, the justices heard arguments about whether tribes are political entities or racial groups, which is an argument defendants said threatened tribal rights and sovereignty.
More than 450 tribal nations filed amicus briefs in support of ICWA, and numerous Native American organizations, child welfare organizations, over half of all states and members of Congress showed support for the act.
ICWA was created in response to the mistreatment of generations of Native American people by the government and private citizens such as through the enrollment of children in boarding schools and the adoption of children out of tribes into non-Native families.
In 1978, between a quarter and a third of all Native children were taken from their families and
put in foster homes, up for adoption or into institutions, according to surveys by the Association on American Indian Affairs.
During Senate committee hearings about Indian child welfare, then Choctaw Chief Calvin Isaac testified that raising Native children in non-Native homes reduces tribes' chances of survival.
His testimony was cited in the Supreme Court's decision and in a 1989 case brought by the tribe that helped define ICWA.
In Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians v. Holyfield, the Supreme Court ruled that through the ICWA, tribal courts have the power to hear adoption proceedings for Native children.
The court ruled tribes have jurisdiction over children domiciled on a reservation based on tribe membership or eligible membership, even if they aren't physically present there.
MBCI is the state's only federally recognized tribe. Over 11,000 members are descendants of Choctaws who remained in Mississippi to preserve their cultural heritage and ancestral homelands, said Chief Ben.
“Today, just as in the past, the preservation and security of our Tribe, our culture, and our tribal children and families are of utmost importance,” he said.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: The controversial day that Robert Kennedy came to the University of Mississippi
Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Ellington talks with Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender about former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's speech at the University of Mississippi less than four years after the riots that occurred after the integration of the school. Ellington, who at the time headed the Ole Miss Speaker's Bureau as a law school student, recalls the controversy leading up to the speech.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1961
MAY 20, 1961
A white mob of more than 300, including Klansmen, attacked Freedom Riders at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Alabama. Future Congressman John Lewis was among them.
“An angry mob came out of nowhere, hundreds of people, with bricks and balls, chains,” Lewis recalled.
After beating on the riders, the mob turned on reporters and then Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who was beaten unconscious and left in the street after helping two riders.
“Then they turned on my colleagues and started beating us and beat us so severely, we were left bloodied and unconscious in the streets of Montgomery,” Lewis recalled.
As the mob headed his way, Freedom Rider James Zwerg said he asked for God to be with him, and “I felt absolutely surrounded by love. I knew that whether I lived or died, I was going to be OK.”
The mob beat him so badly that his suit was soaked in blood.
“There was nothing particularly heroic in what I did,” he said. “If you want to talk about heroism, consider the Black man who probably saved my life. This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said ‘Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital.”
To quell the violence, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent in 450 federal marshals.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
2024 Mississippi legislative session not good for private school voucher supporters
Despite a recent Mississippi Supreme Court ruling allowing $10 million in public money to be spent on private schools, 2024 has not been a good year for those supporting school vouchers.
School-choice supporters were hopeful during the 2024 legislative session, with new House Speaker Jason White at times indicating support for vouchers.
But the Legislature, which recently completed its session, did not pass any new voucher bills. In fact, it placed tighter restrictions on some of the limited laws the state has in place allowing public money to be spent on private schools.
Notably, the Legislature passed a bill that provides significantly more oversight of a program that provides a limited number of scholarships or vouchers for special-needs children to attend private schools.
Going forward, thanks to the new law, to receive the vouchers a parent must certify that their child will be attending a private school that offers the special needs educational services that will help the child. And the school must report information on the academic progress of the child receiving the funds.
Also, efforts to expand another state program that provides tax credits for the benefit of private schools was defeated. Legislation that would have expanded the tax credits offered by the Children's Promise Act from $8 million a year to $24 million to benefit private schools was defeated. Private schools are supposed to educate low income students and students with special needs to receive the benefit of the tax credits. The legislation expanding the Children's Promise Act was defeated after it was reported that no state agency knew how many students who fit into the categories of poverty and other specific needs were being educated in the schools receiving funds through the tax credits.
Interestingly, the Legislature did not expand the Children's Promise Act but also did not place more oversight on the private schools receiving the tax credit funds.
The bright spot for those supporting vouchers was the early May state Supreme Court ruling. But, in reality, the Supreme Court ruling was not as good for supporters of vouchers as it might appear on the surface.
The Supreme Court did not say in the ruling whether school vouchers are constitutional. Instead, the state's highest court ruled that the group that brought the lawsuit – Parents for Public Schools – did not have standing to pursue the legal action.
The Supreme Court justices did not give any indication that they were ready to say they were going to ignore the Mississippi Constitution's plain language that prohibits public funds from being provided “to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a free school.”
In addition to finding Parents for Public Schools did not have standing to bring the lawsuit, the court said another key reason for its ruling was the fact that the funds the private schools were receiving were federal, not state funds. The public funds at the center of the lawsuit were federal COVID-19 relief dollars.
Right or wrong, The court appeared to make a distinction between federal money and state general funds. And in reality, the circumstances are unique in that seldom does the state receive federal money with so few strings attached that it can be awarded to private schools.
The majority opinion written by Northern District Supreme Justice Robert Chamberlin and joined by six justices states, “These specific federal funds were never earmarked by either the federal government or the state for educational purposes, have not been commingled with state education funds, are not for educational purposes and therefore cannot be said to have harmed PPS (Parents for Public Schools) by taking finite government educational funding away from public schools.”
And Southern District Supreme Court Justice Dawn Beam, who joined the majority opinion, wrote separately “ to reiterate that we are not ruling on state funds but American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds … The ARPA funds were given to the state to be used in four possible ways, three of which were directly related to the COVID -19 health emergency and one of which was to make necessary investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.”
Granted, many public school advocates lamented the decision, pointing out that federal funds are indeed public or taxpayer money and those federal funds could have been used to help struggling public schools.
Two justices – James Kitchens and Leslie King, both of the Central District, agreed with that argument.
But, importantly, a decidedly conservative-leaning Mississippi Supreme Court stopped far short – at least for the time being – of circumventing state constitutional language that plainly states that public funds are not to go to private schools.
And a decidedly conservative Mississippi Legislature chose not to expand voucher programs during the 2024 session.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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