Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-376_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 51.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

9 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

the State’s “belief that an Indian reservation is an unsuita-
ble environment for a child.”  Ibid.  So it was that some In-
dian families, “forced onto reservations at gunpoint,” were 
later “told that they live[d] in a place unfit for raising their 
children.”  Id., at 3–4. 

Aggravating matters, these separations were frequently
“carried out without due process of law.”  Id., at 4.  Children 
and their parents rarely had counsel.  Ibid.  For that mat-
ter, few cases saw the inside of a courtroom.  Welfare de-
partments knew that they could threaten to withhold ben-
efit payments if Indian parents did not surrender custody. 
Id., at 4–5.  Nor were threats always necessary.  After all 
the Tribes had suffered at the government’s hands, many 
parents simply believed they had no power to resist.  Ibid.  
One interviewed mother “wept that she did not dare protest 
the taking of her children for fear of going to jail.”  Id., at 7. 
For those Indian parents who did resist, “simple abduction”
remained an option.  Id., at 5.  Parents were, for instance, 
sometimes tricked into signing forms that they believed au-
thorized only a brief removal of their children.  Ibid.  Only
later would they discover that the forms purported to sur-
render full custody.  Ibid. 

Like  the  boarding  school  system  that  preceded  it,  this 
new  program  of  removal  had  often-disastrous  conse-
quences.  “Because the family is the most fundamental eco-
nomic, educational, and health-care unit” in society, these
“assaults on Indian families” contributed to the precarious
conditions that Indian parents and children already faced. 
Id., at 7–8.  Many parents came to “feel hopeless, powerless, 
and unworthy”—further feeding the cycle of removal.  Id., 
at  8.  For  many  children,  separation  from  their  families 
caused “severe distress” that “interfere[d] with their physi-
cal, mental, and social growth and development.”  Ibid.  It 
appears, too, that Indian children were “significantly more
likely”  to  experience  “physical,  sexual,  [and]  emotional”