 - The Wyoming Legislature’s Select Committee on Tribal Relations approved a bill draft this week that would remove the July 2027 sunset date from the Wyoming Indian Child Welfare Act.){kind=link}
(Riverton, WY) – The Wyoming Legislature’s Select Committee on Tribal Relations approved a bill draft this week that would remove the July 2027 sunset date from the Wyoming Indian Child Welfare Act.
WICWA became state law in 2023, after local community members raised concerns about the potential for the federal Indian Child Welfare Act to be declared unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal law later that year, but this week, state and Tribal officials said there’s still a chance ICWA could be challenged again in the future.
“The original reason for the sunset still exists,” Northern Arapaho Department of Family Services Director Shelly Mbonu said during this week’s Tribal Relations Committee meeting. “There is still legal uncertainty around ICWA. … Pieces of that are still in question today. (So) I would ask that we continue with this Wyoming ICWA bill.”
Future challenges
When the Supreme Court upheld ICWA in 2023, “there were two specific issues that were part of the challenge to the law which the court refused to decide,” Wyoming Legislative Service Office Legal Services Administrator Ian Shaw explained.
“The federal Supreme Court decided that the parties to the lawsuit didn’t have standing to challenge those provisions,” Shaw said. “But it is conceivable that, sometime in the future, any plaintiff could challenge those provisions of the federal ICWA Act, and it could be declared unconstitutional – (and) if this sunset provision were allowed to exist, Wyoming might not have a backup act at that point. So that’s the justification for potentially repealing … that sunset date.”
The sunset provision “really doesn’t serve a function,” Tribal Relations Committee Co-Chair and Wyoming Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, said, arguing that “it would be very easy to take it out so that we’d always have that backup plan – because we care; we care in Wyoming that Native children are placed with Native people.”
Plus, Case said, if WICWA is allowed to sunset and ICWA is challenged again, Wyoming would have to “restart” the process of passing a state version of the federal law, “probably under pressure, (and) I don’t view that as good strategy necessarily.”
3-1 approval
More than half a dozen Tribal leaders spoke in favor of removing the sunset provision from the WICWA law this week – but when it was time to vote for the bill draft, Wyoming Rep. Pepper Ottman, R-Riverton, said she felt conflicted about supporting the legislation because of “the situation with the children.”
“I understand that … we all want to know where we come from,” Ottman said. “But what I have seen is that there are children that there’s no place to put them. And so it’s like, ‘Well, they have to stay with the Tribe.’ Well, if there’s no place to put them, how is that a benefit? And so that’s where I wrestle with it. …
“If we’re looking at government, if we’re looking at the sense of law and rule and what we would like in culture, yes, you need to have that opportunity and that priority. But if we’re looking at why is that child out of the home anyway … (that’s) kind of what I’m wondering.”
Ottman proposed an amendment to the bill draft that would have extended the sunset date by four years instead of repealing it altogether, but her motion died for lack of a second, and the original bill draft was approved 3-1, with two committee members excused.
Later, Wyoming Department of Family Services Field Operations Administrator Sara Serelson clarified that ICWA prioritizes Tribal placements, but when none are available, the law allows officials to move down a preference list that can result in non-Tribal placements.
“We are in support of this (bill draft) and believe it’s appropriate for the children of Wyoming,” Serelson said.
The bill draft will now advance to the Wyoming Legislature for further consideration.