Opinion | Will a new law really give Minnesota a gold standard in child protection policies?

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A new Minnesota law will make it harder to protect children from abuse and neglect.

In May 2024, 2-year-old Niindonis Goodman died of fentanyl poisoning in a Minneapolis homeless shelter, with her mother passed out nearby. Born with drugs in her system to a mother with a long history of drug addiction who had relinquished custody of other children, Niindonis spent less than two months in foster care after birth before returning to her mother. Child welfare and court oversight ended six months later. Despite new allegations of drug use weeks before her death, no protective action was taken.

Niindonis was a Native American child, meaning she fell under the jurisdiction of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and the more expansive Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act.

The ICWA was passed in 1978 to address historical abuses of government power, including the removal of Native American children from their families as a result of cultural biases. It endows Native parents with expansive rights to retain and regain custody of children and makes it harder for state officials to intervene. Originally deemed the “gold standard” for recognition of tribal sovereignty, the ICWA has been widely embraced as the gold standard of child welfare practice for all children.

Minnesota legislators seem to agree.

Paradoxically, the ICWA (and Minnesota’s expansion) has not reduced disparities. Before ICWA, congressional testimony asserted that Indian children in Minnesota are placed in foster care or in adoptive homes “at a per-capita rate 5 times greater than non-Indian children.” Today, Minnesota’s Native American children enter foster care at 13 times the rate of non-Native children.

Native American children also die from abuse and neglect at extraordinarily disproportionate rates.

As part of the Lives Cut Short project, we reviewed Minnesota fatality records for 2022 to 2024. We found that Native American children accounted for 6% of all child deaths and 17% of child maltreatment-related deaths — 12 times their population share.

Concerns of disproportionality among other populations drove support for Minnesota’s new law. Children who are Black (not multiracial) account for 11% of the state population and 13% of foster care entries. The combined population of Black and multiracial Black children accounts for approximately 15% of Minnesota’s child population and 25% of the foster care population. Tragically, Lives Cut Short found that this population of children accounts for 21% of all child deaths and 36% of maltreatment-related deaths.

Expanding ICWA standards to nearly all children may endanger them without reducing disproportionality. One reason is that ICWA standards require states to make “active efforts” to preserve families and reunify children — without exception. The more flexible “reasonable efforts” standard, which applied to non-Native children before the new law was enacted, included exceptions for “aggravated circumstances” such as severe or chronic harm, sexual abuse, murder or manslaughter. The new law does not. Likewise, under the new law children cannot be placed in foster care — and parents cannot be court-ordered to participate in rehabilitative services — absent “clear and convincing evidence” rather than “a preponderance of the evidence.” Proponents believe these higher standards ensure parents have a fair shot at family preservation or reunification. But active efforts have led agencies to spend time and resources on unreasonable and sometimes harmful efforts to preserve and reunify families.

These ICWA provisions will soon apply to almost all children in Minnesota. Voicing support for this expansion, state Rep. Ben Davis argued, “Every parent deserves a second, third or fourth chance.”

Is that what Minnesotans have in mind?