Jad Abumrad (host) / main Radiolab host voice
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And then finally, any other family, such as the Capobiancos.
So if the South Carolina Supreme Court decides that this is still an equal case, and if... The paternal grandparents file a petition to adopt,
Yeah, and Marcia even says that there's a chance that Dustin Brown himself... My guess is that Dustin Brown...
will come forward to adopt veronica his rights were terminated because he failed to support but now we've got basically two years worth of evidence of him loving and supporting and taking care of her and the court's not going to ignore that it's just so crazy to think though that this guy who's the biological father uh may ultimately become the adoptive father
You know, John Nichols, Dustin Brown's lawyer, he said to me that this is totally uncharted waters, that he's never seen a case of this magnitude get decided by the Supreme Court and still be so open-ended.
John said that they expect to hear something from the South Carolina Supreme Court
on Monday, July 8th, just laying out what the next steps are.
We spent a fair amount of time in the story examining the worst-case scenario from the tribe's perspective, that this case could be used as a kind of Trojan horse to say that all of Indian law is an unfair race-based preference and therefore should be negated.
I'm gathering from what you just said that that did not come to pass.
But there is this sense that they kind of planted a seed.
For example, Justice Alito, who wrote the ruling, he starts it off with mention of Veronica being 1.2% Cherokee.
Which is interesting because it sounds like he's about to make an argument for why this is a race-based preference and why it's a violation of equal protection.
Like he's about to go nuclear if that's how he starts.
Which to me was kind of baffling because why would you start off with this massive footprint and then leave a very small one?