The Bureau of Indian Affairs released revised implementation guidelines this week for the Indian Child Welfare Act. The federal policy is aimed at keeping Native American children with Native American families in child custody cases .
This is the first guideline update to be issued in more than 35 years.
Officials with the BIA said the revisions were made to provide more clarity to state and federal courts that are responsible for implementing the law.
"Thirty-five years later, we’ve learned a lot since the Indian Child Welfare Act was enacted," said Kevin Washburn, the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior. "And so we’ve tried to implement what we’ve learned in the last 35 years."
One update involves something known as the "existing Indian family" exception, which some state-level judges have applied when there is no Native American family in a child’s life. The updated guidelines have clarified that ICWA must still be applied in those instances.
Opponents say the guidelines diminish the rights of birth parents.
The federal law was recently at the center of a South Carolina-based adoption dispute that was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court.
