Jad Abumrad (host) / main Radiolab host voice

I'm a pretty bad swimmer.

How do you know I'm a good swimmer?

Well, I appreciate that.

Okay, so the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the adoptive couple, which is to say against the birth father.

To Dustin Brown, the dad, lost.

Right.

It was like a 60-page ruling, and not being totally confident what all the ramifications were, I just made some calls.

I'm doing great.

How are you?

For example, I Skyped with Marsha Zug, who you remember from the piece.

She's a law professor at the University of South Carolina.

Can you walk me through what this opinion means?

So basically the Supreme Court ruled that Dustin Brown shouldn't have been allowed to invoke the Indian Child Welfare Act because he didn't have what's called continuing custody of Veronica.

Continuing custody.

Right.

They argue that this law is about preventing the breakup of Indian families and there was no Indian family here because they didn't live together.

The dad and the daughter didn't live together.

Right.

So they don't scrap the Indian Child Welfare Act.

They just say that it shouldn't apply in a case like this.