page_title: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl
section_title: Dissenting opinions
hierarchical_section_title: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl / Supreme Court / Dissenting opinions
caption_attribution_description: English: Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court justice
context_page_description: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, 570 U.S. 637, was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that held that several sections of the Indian Child Welfare Act do not apply to Native American biological fathers who are not custodians of an Indian child. The court held that the procedures required by the ICWA to end parental rights do not apply when the child has never lived with the father. Additionally, the requirement to make extra efforts to preserve the Indian family also does not apply, nor is the preferred placement of the child in another Indian family required when no other party has formally sought to adopt the child.
  In 2009, a couple from South Carolina, Matthew and Melanie Capobianco, sought to adopt a child whose father, Dusten Brown, was an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and whose mother, Christina Maldonado, was predominantly Hispanic. Brown contested the adoption on the grounds that he was not properly notified in accordance with the ICWA, and won both in trial court and on appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court, and in December 2011, the father was given custody of the child.
caption: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, author of a dissenting opinion
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