On January 4, 2013, Bancroft partner Paul D. Clement appeared on CNN to discuss Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, a Minor under the Age of Fourteen Years, Birth Father, and the Cherokee Nation, S. Ct. 12-399, following the Supreme Court’s decission to grant the petition for writ of certiorari. On October 22, 2012, Bancroft lawyers Paul Clement and Kelsi Brown Corkran filed a brief on behalf of the Guardian ad Litem as representative of respondent Baby Girl, supporting the petition for writ of certiorari. The Supreme Court will review a South Carolina Supreme Court decision holding that the Indian Child Welfare Act (“ICWA”) required that at 27 months old, Baby Girl be transferred from petitioners’ custody to the custody of her biological father, whom she had never met because he had abandoned her before birth and shown no interest in her before finding out, four months after she was born, that the biological mother had placed her in an adoptive home. The Guardian’s brief argues that the South Carolina Supreme Court’s interpretation and application of ICWA in this case violated Baby Girl’s equal protection and due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.
U.S. Supreme Court tackles custody battle, CNN (Jan. 4, 2013)