Alaskans should be mad

 Sullivan should stand up for principle, stand down on Barrett nomination

 

 caption: Senator Dan Sullivan met with U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Sept. 30, 2020. (Photo provided by Sen. Sullivan office)

Where does Judge Barrett stand on Native American issues? 

While her record is thin, Alaska Natives should be concerned. Barrett has repeatedly stated that she shares the late Justice Scalia’s judicial philosophy, and he voted against tribal interests in over 86% of the cases he heard, including all of the cases he considered when she clerked for him in 1999.

Justice Scalia was also skeptical of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 1978 law enacted to prevent state agencies from forcibly removing Indian children from their families and placing them in Native American boarding schools or in non-Indian foster and adoptive homes. In the earliest Supreme Court case to interpret ICWA, Justice Scalia voted to uphold tribal jurisdiction, but in later years said that it was a vote he regretted.

READ: Sullivan should stand up for principle, stand down on Barrett nomination - Anchorage Daily News