Alaska Supreme Court upholds ICWA termination, clarifies standards

The Alaska Supreme Court on June 12 upheld a decision to permanently end the parental rights of a mother and father to their two children — and used the case to lay out, clearly, how strictly Alaska courts must follow the federal law that protects Native children before a family can be split for good.

The case, Ruby C. v. State, involves two children who qualify as Indian children under the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA.

A year ago, an Anchorage judge terminated the rights of the parents, identified in court records only as Ruby C. and Jaspar K., after finding the children had been harmed by substance abuse and domestic violence that the parents did not resolve. Expert witnesses testified that leaving the children in their parents' custody would likely cause them serious emotional or physical damage. The parents appealed; the Supreme Court affirmed.

What makes the ruling notable is the high bar ICWA sets. Because the children are Native, the state couldn't rely on the ordinary standard of proof. For the most serious finding, it had to prove its case "beyond a reasonable doubt" — the same standard used in criminal trials — backed by a qualified expert. The state also had to show it made "active efforts," meaning more than the routine attempt, to provide services and keep the family together before moving to terminate.

The state carries the burden on both.

ICWA exists because of a long history of Native children being removed from their families and communities, and the law deliberately makes termination difficult.

This ruling underscores that difficult is not the same as impossible: where there is clear evidence of ongoing danger, courts will put a child's safety first. Native advocates have long warned that even careful terminations can extend a pattern of disproportionate removal of Native children; child-welfare agencies counter that the law was followed and the evidence of risk was plain.

The decision is narrow — it turns on the specific facts of this family rather than rewriting any rules. Its main value, lawyers say, is clarifying how Alaska's appellate courts apply ICWA's existing standards, which matters because the U.S. Supreme Court upheld ICWA in 2023 but left much of the day-to-day implementation to the states.