Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-376_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 84.0

2 

HAALAND v. BRACKEEN 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

pressly  or  by  necessary  implication.    McCulloch  v.  Mary-
land, 4 Wheat. 316, 405 (1819).  All other powers (like fam-
ily or criminal law) generally remain with the States.  The 
Federal  Government  thus  lacks  a  general  police  power  to
regulate state family law.

However, in the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), Con-
gress  ignored  the  normal  limits  on  the  Federal  Govern-
ment’s  power  and  prescribed  rules  to  regulate  state  child
custody proceedings in one circumstance: when the child in-
volved happens to be an Indian.  As the majority acknowl-
edges, ICWA often overrides state family law by dictating
that state courts place Indian children with Indian caretak-
ers even if doing so is not in the child’s best interest.  See 
ante, at 2.  It imposes heightened standards before remov-
ing Indian children from unsafe environments.  See ante, at 
3–4.  And it allows tribes to unilaterally enroll Indian chil-
dren and then intervene in their custody proceedings.  See 
ante, at 4, 6–8. 

In the normal course, we would say that the Federal Gov-
ernment has no authority to enact any of this.  Yet the ma-
jority declines to hold that ICWA is unconstitutional, rea-
soning that the petitioners before us have not borne their 
burden of showing how Congress exceeded its powers.  This 
gets things backwards.  When Congress has so clearly in-
truded upon a longstanding domain of exclusive state pow-
ers, we must ask not whether a constitutional provision pro-
hibits that intrusion, but whether a constitutional provision 
authorizes it. 

The majority and respondents gesture to a smorgasbord 
of  constitutional  hooks  to  support  ICWA;  not  one  of  them 
works.  First,  the  Indian  Commerce  Clause  is  about  com-
merce, not children.  See Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, 570 
U. S.  637,  659–665  (2013)  (THOMAS, J., concurring).    Sec-
ond, the Treaty Clause does no work because ICWA is not 
based  on  any  treaty.    Third,  the  foreign-affairs  powers
(what the majority terms “structural principles”) inherent