What a cruddy month for Native people and their rights, as if "Columbus Day" weren't insult enough. So far, we've had the Republican-dominated Supreme Court taking a dump on Native voting rights in North Dakota, and some shitty Republican idiot in Kansas vowing to send congressional candidate Sharice Davids "back to the reservation" (at least he resigned). Now it turns out the month started with a federal court judge in Texas declaring the Indian Child Welfare Act unconstitutional in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is a Republican. Gosh, it's almost as if there were some factor other than "Native Americans" and "October" at work in all three.

In the Texas case, US District Judge Reed O'Connor overturned the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), the federal law governing the adoption of Native American children, because you see the law's intent of keeping Native American kids with Native American families is "racist," according to the twisted logic of a Republican attorney general. O'Connor held the law -- put in place in 1978 to curb what tribes considered a longstanding policy of decimating tribes by adopting kids out to white families -- actually violated the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. (It is in fact conforming to one of the UN's definitions of "genocide": forcibly transferring children of one group to another group.)

O'Connor also ruled the law violated the 10th Amendment by forcing states to modify their own laws to conform with a federal policy, in violation of the proper balance between state and federal sovereignty.

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