Chippewa adoption in The Good Wife

The Good Wife: A Weird Year (5.22)The lawsuit that hangs over Alicia's head: The $6-million suit that's on the periphery of the episode and gets the central story rolling has been a recurring plot point this season. Alicia is being blamed for David Lee's attempted bribery of the Chippewa Nation, which screwed up an adoption. Why? Because Lockhart-Gardner bribed an associate with a partnership to secure his testimony pinning the blame on Alicia. Some of the facts of the case are based on Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, in which a couple from South Carolina adopted a child in 2009. Two years later, the child's biological father, a member of the Cherokee Nation, contested the adoption on the grounds that he wasn't properly notified, and the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) set guidelines for how parental rights for members of Native-American tribes can be relinquished. In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the relevant sections of the ICWA do not apply when the parent in question never had custody of the child. In 2013, the adoption of "Baby Veronica" was finalized.