Opinion ID: 4200908
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: ICWA Invokes State Law

Text: ¶ 168 The starting place for our analysis should be the statutory text. And that text strongly signals the congressional adoption of a state standard of paternity. It does so by employing legal terms of art with settled meaning in family law. ¶ 169 A person cannot qualify as a parent under ICWA if he is an “unwed father” whose “paternity has not been acknowledged or established.” 25 U.S.C. § 1903(9). Four elements of this phrasing cut against the majority’s conclusion that ICWA directs state courts to establish a uniform federal standard of paternity. ¶ 170 First, the words acknowledgement and establishment of paternity are long-established terms of art in state family law. All fifty states prescribe their own standards and procedures for acknowledging or establishing paternity.34 But the phrases employed in ICWA encompass invoked state law. Jared P., 209 P.3d at 161 (”ICWA does not, however, define how paternity can be acknowledged or otherwise detail any procedure to establish paternity. Consequently, we look to state law to determine whether paternity has been acknowledged or established.” (emphasis added)); Bruce L. v. W.E., 247 P.3d 966, 978 (Alaska 2011) (following courts that “have looked to state law . . . to determine whether paternity has been acknowledged or established under ICWA.”). Granted, both the Arizona and Alaska courts concluded that the putative father did not have to perfectly comply with applicable state law in some circumstances. But that is a far cry from the adoption of a uniform federal reasonability standard. “All states have programs under which birthing hospitals give 34 unmarried parents of a newborn the opportunity to acknowledge the (cont.) 88 Cite as: 2017 UT 59 Lee, A.C.J., Opinion of the Court in part concepts that most all states share in common: (a) the notion of an acknowledgement of paternity, which generally refers to a writing by a father (with or without a requirement of consent by the mother), where the writing itself has the legal effect of sustaining a father’s parental rights to some degree;35 and (b) the concept of an establishment of father’s paternity of the child. States must also help parents acknowledge paternity up until the child’s eighteenth birthday through vital records offices or other offices designated by the state. Paternity can also be established at a court or administrative hearing or by default if the man was served notice of a paternity hearing but did not appear.” DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES OFFICE OF CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT, HANDBOOK ON CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT 14 (2008) (emphasis added). 35 Even in 1978, when ICWA was enacted, “acknowledge” was a term of art that indicated a specific process under state law—though varying from state to state. No later than 1921, there was already debate about what steps an unwed father should be required to take to legally “acknowledge” paternity. WALTER C. TIFFANY, HANDBOOK ON THE LAW OF PERSONS AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS 302–03 (Roger W. Cooley ed., 3d ed. 1921) (“The courts are not in agreement as to what constitutes a sufficient acknowledgment of the child to legitimate it. In a few instances it has been held that the acknowledgment must be by an instrument executed for the express purpose, but the better rule seems to be that the writing need not be made for the express purpose of acknowledging the child, but that the acknowledgment is sufficient if made in any written instrument, collateral or otherwise.”). In the 1970s there was still “great variety in the methods prescribed [by the states] for making the acknowledgment.” HOMER H. CLARK, JR., THE LAW OF DOMESTIC RELATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES 173 (1987). “In some states,” the acknowledgement had to be “in writing and witnessed, in others it [had to] be executed before a notary or other officer, in others it [had to] be merely in writing, in others it [had to] be ‘general and notorious’ and in still others no formalities whatever [were] required.” Id. In an effort to eliminate the inconsistency that stemmed from states’ exclusive jurisdiction to prescribe the acknowledgement process, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws published the Uniform Parentage Act of 1973. Pursuant to the Act, an unwed father (cont.) 89 Adoption of B.B. Lee, A.C.J., Opinion of the Court in part paternity, which is initiated by a court filing and culminates in the issuance of a judicial order (sometimes contested but not necessarily) establishing the father’s parental rights and obligations.36 Surely it was no accident that Congress utilized terms with accepted meaning in state family law. And because it did, we should presume that ICWA embraced the principles embedded in these state law terms. ¶ 171 Second, the statute speaks in the past tense. It forecloses the right to notice and intervention for unwed fathers whose paternity “has not been acknowledged or established.” 25 U.S.C. § 1903(9). This backward-looking phrasing further underscores the state term-of-art premise of the ICWA definition. Congress made the putative father’s right to notice and intervention dependent on what had been acknowledged or established—past tense. And there is not and never has been any way for a father to “acknowledge” or “establish” his parental rights as a matter of federal law. There is no such thing as federal family law (see more on that below). And for that reason it would be very odd for Congress to be speaking of a federal could acknowledge paternity “in a writing filed with the appropriate court or Vital Statistics Bureau” if the mother “does not dispute the acknowledgment within a reasonable time after being informed thereof.” UNIF. ACT ON PARENTAGE § 4 (NAT’L CONFERENCE OF COMM’RS ON UNIF. STATE LAWS 1973). As of 2000, nineteen states had enacted the Uniform Parentage Act in its entirety and many others had enacted “significant portions of it.” Prefatory Note to UNIF. PARENTAGE ACT (NAT’L CONFERENCE OF COMM’RS ON UNIF. STATE LAWS 2002). But there is still no national, uniform standard. This is purely a matter of state law, and the standards vary widely across the fifty states. 36 Even prior to ICWA, “statutes ha[d] been enacted in most if not all jurisdictions creating judicial proceedings to establish the paternity of an illegitimate child. . . .” 59 A.L.R. 3d 685 (1974) (emphasis added); see also 14 C.J.S. Children Out-of-Wedlock § 111 (describing the different burdens of proof in suits to establish paternity); UNIF. ACT ON PARENTAGE §§ 3, 6 (NAT’L CONFERENCE OF COMM’RS ON UNIF. STATE LAWS 1973) (authorizing a “natural father” to establish his paternity through court action). 90 Cite as: 2017 UT 59 Lee, A.C.J., Opinion of the Court in part acknowledgement or establishment of paternity as a prerequisite to a right to notice and intervention.37 ¶ 172 Third, the statutory duty to provide notice to those whose paternity has been acknowledged or established indicates that these are established, formal mechanisms. A family who wishes to adopt a child of Indian heritage has a statutory duty to provide notice to any parent. But if parent includes anyone who has vaguely acknowledged paternity in some informal way, the adopting family will have no way to know how to fulfill its obligations under ICWA. And an Indian mother would have no way of assuring that her child will actually be given to the adoptive couple, even after her own parental rights have been terminated. That is a further strike against the majority’s construction. Surely Congress didn’t mean to require biological mothers and 37 The majority appears to ignore this point in its reasonableness analysis. Rather than focusing exclusively on E.T.’s actions prior to the termination order, it spends significant time on the actions E.T. took after the termination order. But E.T. could not possibly have been entitled to notice and intervention at the time the proceeding began—or even at the time of his motion to intervene—based on actions he took after that time. I am also skeptical that the actions he took prior to the custody proceedings satisfied even the majority’s reasonability standard for acknowledging paternity. My skepticism stems not from any “socioeconomic [or] cultural assumptions,” supra ¶ 75 n.29, but from the inherent difficulty of administering a “reasonability” standard that credits purely private conduct. The relevant “actions” boil down to E.T. providing for C.C. for the first six months of pregnancy and believing that C.C. would come back to South Dakota or that he would join C.C. in Utah after the baby was born. If this amounts to a reasonable acknowledgment of paternity, almost anything will. After all, E.T. appears to have provided for C.C. even before the child was conceived, and he does not assert that he articulated or documented his beliefs regarding future plans before the custody proceedings were initiated. Under those circumstances I cannot see how the adoptive parents or the district court would have any way of knowing that E.T. had an interest in the child—or of providing E.T. notice at the time the adoption petition was filed. And this only exacerbates the practical problems of the majority’s standard. 91 Adoption of B.B. Lee, A.C.J., Opinion of the Court in part adoptive families to give notice to persons whose acknowledgement of paternity was so vague and informal that they cannot reasonably be identified. And the majority’s decision to require this only enhances the practical concerns identified above. See supra ¶¶ 111–15. ¶ 173 A fourth and related point builds on a series of established canons or norms of statutory construction in this field. When Congress passed ICWA, it was surely aware that (a) “[t]he whole subject of the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child” has long been understood to “belong[] to the laws of the states, and not to the laws of the United States,” Ex parte Burrus, 136 U.S. 586, 593–94 (1890);38 (b) state courts have “virtually exclusive primacy” in the area of family law, while “federal courts, as a general rule, do not adjudicate issues of” family law “even when there might otherwise be a basis for federal jurisdiction,” United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675, 2691 (2013); and (c) for these and other reasons, family law terms in federal statutes are ordinarily deemed to be “determined by state, rather than federal law,” De Sylva v. Ballentine, 351 U.S. 570, 580 (1956). ¶ 174 These principles lend a heavy dose of skepticism to the view that Congress intended to delegate to state courts the power to prescribe a set of uniform federal standards of paternity. That would be an extraordinary delegation of federal policymaking power. To me it’s unimaginable that Congress would have meant to delegate that power to a judicial branch of another sovereign—fifty sovereigns, really—in a field traditionally left to that sovereign’s sole authority.39 38 See also Haddock v. Haddock, 201 U.S. 562, 575 (1906) (“No one denies that the states, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, possessed full power over the subject of marriage and divorce.”), overruled in part on other grounds by Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U.S. 287 (1942); United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675, 2689–90 (2013) (“By history and tradition the definition and regulation of marriage . . . has been treated as being within the authority and realm of the separate States.”). 39 My point is not to state a general objection to an inquiry into “reasonableness”—or even to “subjective standards generally.” See Oliver v. Utah Labor Comm’n, 2017 UT 39, ¶ 84 n.18, __ P.3d __ (Lee, A.C.J., concurring). It is to emphasize the need to tie our legal standards “to the statutory text,” and to urge caution for “fuzzy” legal inquiries (cont.) 92 Cite as: 2017 UT 59 Lee, A.C.J., Opinion of the Court in part ¶ 175 The exercise of this power is a matter of legislative policymaking. There is no “right” answer to the question of what it takes for an unwed father to acknowledge or establish paternity. So to make law on the appropriate standards, we would have to step into the role long held by our legislature. I have no idea how to do that. (Should we hold legislative hearings the way the legislature does when it adopts or amends laws in this field?) And I am certain Congress didn’t mean for the Utah Supreme Court to have the final say on the matter. We are one of fifty state courts of last resort. So to interpret ICWA to give this body the power to decide on an ideal standard for the acknowledgement or establishment of paternity is to assure a lack of a uniform standard. That cannot be what Congress had in mind—even under the majority’s strong purposivist view of ICWA. See supra ¶ 69 (concluding that Congress’s purpose of assuring uniformity sustains the conclusion that this court should prescribe a federal standard of acknowledging or establishing paternity). ¶ 176 This is a strong indication that we are treading into a domain not meant for us under the terms of the governing statute. “When presented with alternative interpretations of a statutory scheme, we should choose the one that involves the judiciary least in the enterprise of legislative policymaking.” State v. Parduhn, 2011 UT 55, ¶ 72, 283 P.3d 488 (Lee, J., dissenting). Courts should not go looking for opportunities to “become a policymaker instead of an interpreter.” Id. “We should presume that the legislature intended to preserve the respective legislative and judicial roles, with the legislature making policy and the courts construing and applying that policy to cases that come before them.” Id. “If one of two interpretations of a statute that “bear no relation” to the governing terms of the law. Id. For that reason the majority’s Fourth Amendment example is beside the point. See supra ¶ 71 n.27. The text of the Fourth Amendment is framed in terms of “unreasonable searches and seizures.” U.S. CONST. amend. IV. So of course the Fourth Amendment test is framed as an inquiry into “reasonableness.” See supra ¶ 71 n.27. But that tells us nothing of relevance to the proper test under ICWA. 93 Adoption of B.B. Lee, A.C.J., Opinion of the Court in part conflates those roles, it should accordingly be rejected as contrary to legislative intent.” Id.40 ¶ 177 This should be doubly true in a case, like this one, where the statute we interpret is a federal law addressing a domain long governed exclusively by state law. I see no room for the conclusion that Congress meant for this court to put our policymaker hats on and decide on the best standard for the acknowledgement or establishment of paternity. Surely it’s more likely that its use of settled terms of state law was a signal that Congress was asking us to apply established state law.