Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-376_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 32

24 

HAALAND v. BRACKEEN 

Opinion of the Court 

is no “preference” to apply if no alternative party that is el-
igible to be preferred . . . has come forward.’ ”  Brief for Fed-
eral Parties 44 (quoting 570 U. S., at 654); Adoptive Couple, 
570 U. S., at 654 (“§1915(a)’s preferences are inapplicable 
in cases where no alternative party has formally sought to
adopt  the  child”).    Instead,  the  burden  is  on  the  tribe  or 
other  objecting  party  to  produce  a  higher-ranked  place-
ment.  Ibid.  So, as it stands, petitioners assert an anticom-
mandeering  challenge  to  a  provision  that  does  not  com-
mand state agencies to do anything.

State courts are a different matter.  ICWA indisputably
requires them to apply the placement preferences in mak-
ing custody determinations.  §§1915(a), (b).  Petitioners ar-
gue that this too violates the anticommandeering doctrine. 
To be sure, they recognize that Congress can require state 
courts, unlike state executives and legislatures, to enforce
federal law.  See New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 
178–179  (1992)  (“Federal  statutes  enforceable  in  state
courts  do,  in  a  sense,  direct  state  judges  to  enforce  them,
but  this  sort  of  federal  ‘direction’  of  state  judges  is  man-
dated by the text of the Supremacy Clause”).  But they draw
a  distinction  between  requiring  state  courts  to  entertain 
federal causes of action and requiring them to apply federal
law to state causes of action.  They claim that if state law 
provides the cause of action—as Texas law does here—then 
the State gets to call the shots, unhindered by any federal 
instruction to the contrary.  Brief for Individual Petitioners 
62–63, 66–67. 

This argument runs headlong into the Constitution.  The 
Supremacy  Clause  provides  that  “the  Laws  of  the  United
States . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the
Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in
the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary not-
withstanding.”  Art. VI, cl. 2.  Thus, when Congress enacts
a valid statute pursuant to its Article I powers, “state law 
is naturally preempted to the extent of any conflict with a