Minnesota justice vows child protection findings ‘will not end up gathering dust’

This story is being co-published with The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice.

Last week, Minnesota’s state Supreme Court announced the launch of its first Council for Child Protection and Maltreatment Prevention. The 26-member group of experts will spend the next year recommending policies and laws to improve outcomes for kids and families in the child welfare system and those at risk of abuse and neglect.

Supreme Court Justice Anne McKeig will chair the council. She vows that its final report by January 2026 will not “end up gathering dust on a shelf or to be forgotten after a brief period of attention.”

“If we’re going to take ownership of the issues plaguing the state, we need to look at it from a broader view — so that families don’t fall down the mine shaft of child welfare,” the 57-year-old justice said in a lengthy interview with The Imprint on Wednesday.

Representative Dave Pinto, DFL-St. Paul, co-author of the 2024 legislation that created the new council, said addressing disproportionality rates in the foster care system will be a major focus for members, a goal Justice McKeig agreed with.

The state recently passed a novel law — the African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act — that aims to spare families whenever possible from CPS removals and separation in the foster care system. The law mirrors federal and state protections already in place for members of Native American tribes.

“I don’t see how you can do child welfare work in Minnesota without making disproportionality a major focus,” Pinto said in a recent interview. “If we want all children to thrive, addressing these disparities has to be at the core of the council’s work. It’s fundamental to effective child welfare work, not just in our state, but across the country.”

Justice McKeig grew up in Federal Dam — current population around 120 — on the border of the Leech Lake Reservation. She is a descendant of the White Earth Nation, and the first Native American woman to serve on a state supreme court.

McKeig graduated from the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, where she is now an adjunct professor. She began her career as a Hennepin County assistant attorney, and later served as a family court judge in Minnesota’s Fourth District Court. She was appointed to the state’s Supreme Court in 2016. McKeig is currently co-chair of the Children’s Justice Initiative, a court collaboration that she says will help facilitate and implement recommendations from the new council.

The council she now chairs also includes Misty Coonce, the state’s first-ever ombudsperson for foster youth as well as tribal leaders, lawyers for kids and parents, addiction specialists and representatives of state and county agencies and the family courts. The group has met once and will continue gathering twice a month in video conference calls.

By next July, they must submit a progress report to the governor, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and ranking legislators. The council’s final report, to be submitted by Jan. 15, 2026, must include “a comprehensive blueprint for child protection and maltreatment prevention in Minnesota.”

McKeig shared her guiding principles when it comes to child welfare work — as well as some more light-hearted aspects of her life and approach to personal well-being.

“I heard someone say recently, ‘I will never apologize for putting the child’s health, welfare and safety first.’ That statement really resonated with me,” she said. “There’s this national debate between parents’ rights and children’s rights — but for me, the child always has to be at the center. It’s not about choosing one over the other, but rather ensuring that the child’s needs are prioritized.”

The council McKeig will now head has a mission to “recognize the inherent sovereignty of Tribal Nations and the unique political status of their children and families.” Indigenous kids, in Minnesota and nationwide, remain the most likely to be taken from home.

The Supreme Court justice said to better serve them, “it’s important to consider what the community — including Minnesota residents and the Native community — wants for our children. We need to draw from these perspectives and advice, while ensuring that adult voices don’t overshadow the needs of children.”

McKeig said she didn’t always have aspirations to become involved in child welfare work, much less become a judge or justice.

She wanted to be a country singer.

But early on, her mother suggested: “Maybe we should come up with another plan.”

So as she walked the line of aspiring to become a country music star, she picked up a book or two on Minnesota law — and it grabbed her. Now, she does both, McKeig said in an interview over Zoom, with a Johnny Cash album placed on a bookshelf in full view of her camera. The Supreme Court justice plays guitar in an all-judge band, performing country-western covers.

During a nearly hour-long discussion, Justice McKeig went beyond her child protection aspirations, discussing her history, career and hopes for Minnesota naming its first-ever Native American governor.

This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity and length.

In the announcement for the new Supreme Court Council on Child Protection and Maltreatment Prevention that you will be leading, Chief Justice [Natalie] Hudson describes you as someone with “a staunch commitment to child welfare,” with decades of experience in this field both as a practitioner and a jurist.

I imagine it’s rare to have a sitting member of a state Supreme Court who has extensive background as a county attorney and family court judge hearing child welfare cases. How often would you say this prior expertise comes in handy for the cases you hear in the state’s highest court, and how has your previous experience granted you insight into these cases?

More often than what people think, because it is a very specialized area, but it is an area that lends itself to other areas of law. Sadly, we know that many of the kids who have their first contact with the system as children end up being in our adult criminal justice system.

For me, it’s also the point that I think we can make the most difference and try to change the trajectory of children’s lives so that it’s not so predictable. It’s a chance for us to really make inroads and hopefully help create healthier families.

Your bio describes you as a national leader “in developing protocols and programs for child protection and Indian Child Welfare.” In your experience, what have been some of the most effective ways of achieving these goals, and how can the new council promote these approaches?

I believe it takes champions to drive change. Early in my career, I was inspired by Kathleen Blatz, who had a remarkable journey from the Legislature to the county attorney’s office, then as a district court judge, and eventually to the Supreme Court as chief justice. Her career showed me that we can advance and expand our impact.

For me, starting as a county attorney and progressing to the district court bench has allowed me to influence child protection work on a broader scale. Now, on this court, I have the opportunity to advance these efforts even further. I believe that children are the most important members of our society, though I often see policies falling short of this principle. Sometimes, it feels like there’s more concern for animals than for children.

What are the unaddressed systemic gaps, problems and difficulties that you hope now to bring attention to?

Simply put, early intervention. Additionally, I think it’s crucial to engage the community in a more meaningful and targeted way. While many of us have a sense of community, the general public often lacks a true understanding of child welfare and protection and may not recognize their role in collectively raising and caring for all children, not just their own. It’s a shared responsibility that should extend beyond just court systems or government efforts.

To address child protection issues effectively, we need a broader approach that prevents problems from escalating to a crisis level. Currently, much of our work is reactionary, dealing with crises because we don’t have the resources to address issues earlier.

Commissions, councils and task forces on improving foster care systems are continuously being proposed, and when reports are written, they have been known to end up on a dusty shelf. From your vantage point, what do you hope this new group will achieve and why are you optimistic of a meaningful outcome?

This is a powerful group of individuals who are deeply committed to the work. They manage to engage with us outside of their busy professional and personal lives, dedicating several hours in the evenings. I’ve made it clear that I don’t want this report to end up gathering dust on a shelf or to be forgotten after a brief period of attention.

Aside from the state’s ombudsperson for foster youth, will the voices of people with direct experience with the foster care system — either as parents or children — be sought? And if so, how will their views be incorporated into any final recommendations?

The council includes voices with lived experience. For example, we have a parent who lost her children, got sober, and now provides peer support to others. There are also two former youth who experienced the system and have grown into successful adults. Some members who initially did not disclose their background with the system have also shared their experiences, which adds valuable perspective.

I also intend to organize virtual town halls to engage with parents, youth and business partners, seeking input from beyond our group. Given Minnesota’s complexity with 87 counties, we’ve got to navigate both local and state systems — along with federal regulations — to ensure our approach is comprehensive.

The Imprint devotes much of its coverage to the Indian Child Welfare Act. Your state has led others in its version strengthening that federal law, the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act, and in creating a unique ICWA unit within its guardian ad litem program representing children.

I have two questions about this. One is, can you share with me your history on ICWA compliance and family preservation issues for tribal members? Secondly, have you played a role in the GAL unit, and what are your thoughts on its effectiveness?

I have to approach this from my experience in the county attorney’s office because, as a court, we are often the last resort for these issues. I have to remain neutral and open-minded about what’s going to come. So, when I was in the county attorney’s office, I particularly appreciated the leadership of Mike Freeman, who encouraged us to “do the right thing” without strictly defining what that meant. He wanted us to go out and have conversations, which allowed us to go out to the tribe and ask what they would like to see for kids.

True collaboration often involves sharing power, and this was evident when we engaged with tribes and incorporated their feedback into our recommendations. Leaders like Robert Blazer, the first Native judge in the Twin Cities, played a crucial role in emphasizing the importance of not just adhering to the letter of the law but also its spirit. This approach extended to others like guardians ad litem, ensuring they were well-trained and embedded in the community to build trusting relationships.

The recently passed Minnesota African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act applies the current standards for tribal children to nearly all kids in foster care. What do you make of these “ICWA for all”-type efforts?

I don’t know that we can ever do too much for the well-being of kids. Do I think it’s going to fix everything? I don’t, because I still think we have to get to the underlying reasons of why kids enter the system.

We sometimes pass laws without giving a whole lot of thought to what their impact is, and then when you pass a law without any resources to go with it, we still have the same problem, which is: we have families who are entering crisis, and we don’t have the resources to help them navigate their way through said crises.

So the problem still remains — even if you pass a law like the Indian Child Welfare Act, in which we want social service agencies to engage in an active way with families. That’s always been the goal. But as you can see, for Native youth, the disproportionality numbers have remained, and while the numbers are really important, I think it’s the reason underneath those numbers.

What’s the why? Why are kids entering the system? And for me, it’s sort of that reentry, the revolving door, where we do the Band-Aid fix and then the family goes on their way, but we’ve never really substantively addressed the issue, and then they come back into the system. Now their problems are more severe, because time has passed and there has not been appropriate help. So it becomes these building blocks of persistent issues that just become bigger and don’t go away.

The Imprint co-publishes many of our stories with Indigenous media outlets across the country and regularly describes Indigenous ways of knowing and tribal methods for healing from trauma. As a descendant of White Earth Nation and the first Native American justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court, what perspectives have you been able to bring to child welfare cases that were lacking in the past, and what types of positive outcomes from that can you tell us about?

Partnerships are crucial because these issues are incredibly complex. No one should bear the entire responsibility for a child’s well-being alone. By bringing more minds and perspectives into decision making, you gain a fuller, 360-degree view of what’s best for a child.

Growing up on the reservation, I valued the authentic relationships and community spirit that were not tied to titles or job success. I admired how people, despite having little themselves, were willing to share what they had to help others in need. This resilience and sense of humor have been healing for us, and they’re integral to our identity.

Participating in ceremonies and embracing my heritage gives me a profound sense of pride and connection. It’s a powerful experience that I believe contributes to a simple, yet deeply meaningful way of living. Caring for each other and valuing our community is at the heart of it all.

Lastly, I’m wondering how you are feeling about a possible outcome after the November election, if the Harris-Walz team is elected and Lt. Gov Peggy Flanagan becomes the first Native American governor of Minnesota?

Who couldn’t be proud of that? You know? She’s an incredible person, and she’s also from the White Earth Nation. We always say that the success of our sister is also success for us in the broadest of ways. And for my kids to see that, I mean, it would be amazing.