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 a small town — with a current population of 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.
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Publish date : 2024-09-05 13:08:00
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