In re A.B. CA4/2

BACKGROUND

In July 2019, plaintiff and respondent Riverside County Department of Public

Social Services (DPSS) filed a petition pursuant to section 300 for four children: L.U.,

Undesignated statutory references are to the Welfare and Institutions Code. In addition, because ICWA uses the term “Indian,” we do the same for consistency, even though we recognize that other terms, such as “Native American” or “indigenous,” are preferred by many.

2 A.B. III, J.B., and E.B. One of those children, L.U., is not appellant’s child and is not at

issue in this appeal. Because defendant and appellant A.B. II (father), the father of the

other three children, raises only ICWA compliance relating to his possible Indian

ancestry, we need not discuss the circumstances leading to the children’s removal or their

parents’ reunification efforts, except to say that the juvenile court terminated father’s

parental rights to the three children (as well as the parental rights of their mother, who is

not a party to this appeal) in November 2021.

An attachment to a prior dependency petition (involving L.U. and A.B. III, filed

by DPSS filed in 2013) indicates that father claimed to be “a…