The Supreme Court on Thursday preserved the system that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings of Native children, rejecting a broad attack from some Republican-led states and white families who argued it is based on race.

What You Need To Know

  • The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the system that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings of Native children

  • The high court left in place the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted to address concerns that Native children were being separated from their families and, too frequently, placed in non-Native homes

  • Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for a seven-justice majority that the "issues are complicated," but the "bottom line is that we reject all of petitioners' challenges to the statute"

  • The justices rejected a broad attack from some Republican-led states and white families who argued that the system is based on race

The court left in place the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted to address concerns that Native children were being separated from their families and, too frequently, placed in non-Native homes.

Tribal leaders have backed the law as a means of preserving their families, traditions and cultures.

The "issues are complicated" Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for a seven-justice majority, but the "bottom line is that we reject all of petitioners' challenges to the statute."

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, with Alito writing that the decision "disserves the rights and interests of these children."

In a statement, President Joe Biden -- who supported the bill in Congress when he was a young U.S. Senator from Delaware -- expressed solidarity with Tribal Nations "as they celebrate today’s Supreme Court decision."

"The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed to protect the future of Tribal Nations and promote the best interests of Native children, and it does just that," the president said. "The touchstone law respects tribal sovereignty and protects Native children by helping Native families stay together and, whenever possible, keeping children with their extended families or community who already know them, love them, and can help them understand who they are as Native people and citizens of their Tribal Nations."

"Our Nation’s painful history looms large over today’s decision," Biden later added. "In the not-so-distant past, Native children were stolen from the arms of the people who loved them. They were sent to boarding schools or to be raised by non-Indian families—all with the aim of erasing who they are as Native people and tribal citizens. These were acts of unspeakable cruelty that affected generations of Native children and threatened the very survival of Tribal Nations.

"The Indian Child Welfare Act was our Nation’s promise: never again," the president continued, adding: "Tribal Nations fought hard to pass the Indian Child Welfare Act, and I am proud to have joined them in the ongoing efforts to defend it."

Congress passed the law in response to the alarming rate at which Native American and Alaska Native children were taken from their homes by public and private agencies.

The law requires states to notify tribes and seek placement with the child's extended family, members of the child's tribe or other Native American families.

Three white families, the state of Texas and a small number of other states claim the law is based on race and is unconstitutional under the equal protection clause. They also contend it puts the interests of tribes ahead of children and improperly allows the federal government too much power over adoptions and foster placements, areas that typically are under state control.

The lead plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case — Chad and Jennifer Brackeen of Fort Worth, Texas — adopted a Native American child after a prolonged legal fight with the Navajo Nation, one of the two largest Native American tribes, based in the Southwest. The Brackeens are trying to adopt the boy's half-sister, now 4, who has lived with them since infancy. The Navajo Nation has opposed that adoption.

More than three-quarters of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the country and nearly two dozen state attorneys general across the political spectrum had called on the high court to uphold the law.

All the children who have been involved in the current case at one point are enrolled or could be enrolled as Navajo, Cherokee, White Earth Band of Ojibwe and Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. Some of the adoptions have been finalized while some are still being challenged.

The high court had twice taken up cases on the Indian Child Welfare Act before, in 1989 and in 2013, that have stirred intense emotion.

Before the Indian Child Welfare Act was enacted, between 25% and 35% of Native American children were being taken from their homes and placed with adoptive families, in foster care or in institutions. Most were placed with white families or in boarding schools in attempts to assimilate them.