The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the groundbreaking federal adoption law that aims to keep Native American children with tribal families.

By a vote of 7 to 2, the judges rejected a constitutional challenge by a white Texas couple and Texas state attorneys who argued that the adoption preferences for Native Americans amounted to unconstitutional discrimination based on race.

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Essentially, we dismiss all contentions of the statute’s petitioners, some on the merits and others for lack of prestige,” Judge Amy Coney Barrett said on behalf of the court.

Judges Thomas Clarence and Samuel A. Alito Jr. didn’t agree.

The bill was championed by Home Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Indian to serve as a cabinet secretary.

Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978 after finding that “an alarmingly high percentage of Indian families are being broken up by their children being taken away from them, often unjustifiably”. These children were instead raised in boarding schools or with immigrant families.

The law gave tribal leaders a role in arranging adoptions and called for Indigenous children to be placed with members of their extended family or their tribe or members of another tribe.

But these preferences were challenged as unconstitutional by Chad and Jennifer Brackeen, a Texas couple who took in two children shortly after birth with the approval of their mother, who was a Navajo. Tribal authorities later tried to remove the children from the white family and instead send them to a Navajo couple who lived hundreds of miles away.

The Brackeens sued, arguing that adoption decisions should be based on the “best interests of the child”, not the best interests of the tribe.