Before this, Fort attended Hollins University in Virginia and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history with Honors in 1999.
Fort put together a pilot project with her law students to observe child welfare hearings in Ingham and Wayne Counties with the initial stipend.
[2][10] The program offers an opportunity for students to develop their legal research skills and prepare appellate briefs and policy papers for tribal governments and organizations.
It includes fictive and non-fictive kin, extended family, tribal community and the larger American Indian nation.
If the court's decision would have been upheld, the use of ICWA compliance in the removal and placement of children would have been greatly effected by setting some precedence.
The Indian Law Clinic, under the leadership of Kathryn Fort, worked with Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP represented the intervening tribes.
The primary objective behind their intervention was to ensure that the Native voices were heard and represented fairly when the court ultimately decided the case.
An article in Propublica, a non-profit investigative journalism organization was published just days after SCOTUS upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act in Haaland v. Brackeen by a 7–2 vote.
[10][23] The Obama administration's rule aimed to track trends in ICWA-eligible cases' outcomes by modifying the collection method for AFCARS data.
However, in 2020, the Trump administration withdrew those updated guidelines, leading to a lawsuit that argues the decision was unjustified, and Fort's clients have been involved ever since.
This appeal was won after kidnapping conviction, when a mother - a member of Cheyenne River Sioux, took her children to the South Dakota reservation, breaching a joint custody order.
Fort's commented, "In this case, the tribal court decided it was necessary to claim jurisdiction over the case, but the laws of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the states of North Dakota and South Dakota factored into how it ended up in federal appellate court," and added "I don’t think the sky is falling regarding custodial interference.
"[28][22] The SCOTUS case had heard arguments in Halland v. Brackeen, hoping to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.
"[30] Another report discussing Matthew McGill's view of "the real injustice of [ICWA]," replacing the test (the individual assessments in regular adoption hearings) with "with a hierarchy of preferences."
And, when explaining the process, Fort told NPR that this individualized assessment includes consideration of the child's relationship with her relatives, her language, her religion, and her tribal tradition.
[31][10] Speaking about ICWA, "In 1978, when the law was enacted, 1 in 4 Native children was in the child welfare system; the overwhelming majority — 99 percent — were living in non-Native homes," said Kathryn Fort.