When a custody case is filed in both tribal and state court, whoever filed first wins, Alaska Supreme Court rules

When the same custody dispute is filed in both a tribal court and a state court, the court where it was filed first is generally the one that should decide it, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday. The opinion, written by Justice Oravec, upholds a Kenai judge's decision to dismiss a state custody case in favor of the Kenaitze Tribal Court, and spells out the reasoning behind an order the court had already issued in July 2025.

The case involves Sarah Rachel Mallette and Garfield Tau Adams, unmarried parents pursuing custody of their child in two courts at once. Adams is a member of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, and the child is eligible for membership; Mallette has no tribal affiliation. Adams filed first in tribal court, in April 2024, withdrew the petition after the parents reached an agreement, then filed again while a long-term domestic violence protective order Mallette held was still in effect. The tribal court set a custody hearing for June 17, 2024. Mallette filed her state case on June 28 — and that eleven-day gap decided everything.

Because Adams' tribal petition came before Mallette's state complaint, the dismissal stood. The court found little evidence the tribal court actually took up jurisdiction at its June hearing, but called that harmless: what controls is the date a custody case is filed, not whether the tribal court acted on it.

The ruling sets out how a parent who wants a state court to hear the case can get there. They have to either file in state court before the other parent files in tribal court, or challenge the tribal court's authority within the tribal system and exhaust its appeals before returning to state court — and only so long as the tribal court's claim to jurisdiction is "colorable and plausible."

Mallette argued the record is too thin to show the tribal court has authority over her, a non-member who says she never consented to it. The justices agreed the question is real, but directed her to raise it in tribal court first and exhaust tribal appeals before a state court weighs the result.

The decision rests on John v. Baker, the 1999 ruling that Alaska tribes hold inherent, concurrent authority over custody disputes involving their members. It sits outside the Indian Child Welfare Act, which doesn't cover disputes between unmarried parents, and apart from state child-protection cases, where state courts generally hold exclusive jurisdiction over cases involving a Native child unless an exception applies.