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Syllabus

them to apply the placement preferences in making custody determinations. §§1915(a), (b). But Congress can require state courts, unlike state executives and legislatures, to enforce federal law. See New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 178–179. Petitioners draw a distinction between requiring state courts to entertain federal causes of action and requiring them to apply federal law to state causes of action, but this argument runs counter to the Supremacy Clause. When Congress enacts a valid statute, “state law is naturally preempted to the extent of any conflict with a federal statute.” Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, 530 U. S. 363, 372. That a federal law modifies a state law cause of action does not limit its preemptive effect. See, e.g., Hillman v. Maretta, 569 U. S. 483, 493–494 (federal law establishing order of precedence for life insurance beneficiaries preempted state law). Pp. 23–25.

(c) Finally, petitioners insist that Congress cannot force state courts to maintain or transmit records of custody proceedings involving Indian children. But the anticommandeering doctrine applies “distinctively” to a state court’s adjudicative responsibilities. Printz, 521 U. S., at 907. The Constitution allows Congress to require “state judges to enforce federal prescriptions, insofar as those prescriptions relat[e] to matters appropriate for the judicial power.” Ibid. (emphasis deleted). In Printz, the Court indicated that this principle may extend to tasks that are “ancillary” to a “quintessentially adjudicative task”—such as “recording, registering, and certifying” documents. Id., at 908, n. 2. Printz described numerous historical examples of Congress imposing recordkeeping and reporting requirements on state courts. These early congressional enactments demonstrate that the Constitution does not prohibit the Federal Government from imposing adjudicative tasks on state courts. Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U. S. 714, 723. The Court now confirms what Printz suggested: Congress may impose ancillary recordkeeping requirements related to state-court proceedings without violating the Tenth Amendment. Here, ICWA’s recordkeeping requirements are comparable to the historical examples. The duties ICWA imposes are “ancillary” to the state court’s obligation to conduct child custody proceedings in compliance with ICWA. Printz, 521 U. S., at 908, n. 2. Pp. 25–29.

3. The Court does not reach the merits of petitioners’ two additional claims—an equal protection challenge to ICWA’s placement preferences and a nondelegation challenge to §1915(c), the provision allowing tribes to alter the placement preferences—because no party before the Court has standing to raise them. Pp. 29–34.

(a) The individual petitioners argue that ICWA’s hierarchy of preferences injures them by placing them on unequal footing with In-