Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-376_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 31.0

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

23 

Opinion of the Court 

§1912—the  notice  requirement,  expert  witness  require-
ment,  and  evidentiary  standards—we  doubt  that  require-
ments  placed  on  a  State  as  litigant  implicate  the  Tenth 
Amendment.  But  in  any  event,  these  provisions,  like
§1912(d), apply to both private and state actors, so they too 
pose no anticommandeering problem. 

B 
Petitioners  also  raise  a  Tenth  Amendment  challenge  to 
§1915,  which  dictates  placement  preferences  for  Indian
children.  According  to  petitioners,  this  provision  orders
state agencies to perform a “diligent search” for placements
that  satisfy  ICWA’s  hierarchy.    Brief  for  Petitioner  Texas 
63; Reply Brief for Texas 24; see also Brief for Individual
Petitioners 67–68.  Petitioners assert that the Department 
of  the  Interior  understands  §1915  this  way,  25  CFR
§23.132(c)(5), and the Tribes who intervene in proceedings
governed by ICWA share that understanding—for example,
“the Librettis’ adoption of Baby O was delayed because the
Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Tribe demanded that county officials 
exhaustively  search  for  a  placement  with  the  Tribe  first.”
Reply Brief for Texas 24–25.  Just as Congress cannot com-
pel state officials to search databases to determine the law-
fulness of gun sales, Printz, 521 U. S., at 902–904, petition-
ers argue, Congress cannot compel state officials to search
for a federally preferred placement.

As an initial matter, this argument encounters the same
problem that plagues petitioners with respect to §1912: Pe-
titioners have not shown that the “diligent search” require-
ment, which applies to both private and public parties, de-
mands  the  use  of  state  sovereign  authority.    But  this 
argument fails for another reason too: Section 1915 does not
require anyone, much less the States, to search for alterna-
tive  placements.  As  the  United  States  emphasizes,  peti-
tioners’ interpretation “cannot be squared with this Court’s
decision in Adoptive Couple,” which held that “ ‘there simply