Mealey's Native American Law : Mealey's : Legal News & Analysis

Mealey's Native American Law

October 03, 2022
Tribal Court Exhaustion Ruling Stands As Supreme Court Denies Review

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 3 declined to hear a business development contractor’s long-running breach of contract dispute with a Utah Indian tribe in which the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held in its most recent ruling in the case that the contractor must litigate the action in tribal court.
October 03, 2022
Certiorari Petition Denied For Former Tribal Worker’s Sovereign Immunity Challenge

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 3 denied a petition for certiorari filed by a former employee of an Oregon Indian tribe challenging the dismissal of her fraud claims against the tribe and tribal officials by a California appellate court based on the doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity,
October 03, 2022
Indian Land Row Over RV Park In Washington Denied High Court Review

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A dispute over a recreational vehicle park on Indian trust land in Washington state that arose when the park members were ejected from the land due to an expired lease will not be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Oct. 3 denied a petition for certiorari filed by the RV park members’ association.
September 30, 2022
D.C. Federal Judge Dismisses Oklahoma Tribe’s Suit Seeking Creek Reservation Land

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A District of Columbia federal judge on Sept. 29 dismissed the second suit of a small Oklahoma Indian tribe against the Department of the Interior (DOI) seeking a declaration that the tribe is part of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and beneficiary of an 1833 Creek treaty that gives it shared jurisdiction over the vast Creek reservation, finding that the tribe failed to state a valid claim and that its action is barred by collateral estoppel.
September 29, 2022
Negligence, Contract Claims Head To Trial In Dispute Over Law Firm’s Work For Tribe

SAN DIEGO — A California federal judge trimmed claims and counterclaims in ruling on four summary judgment motions in a law firm’s suit against the Native American tribe that fired the firm during negotiations with the state for a tribal gaming compact, allowing claims for negligence and breach of contract to go to trial.
September 27, 2022
16 More Tribes Join Department Of Justice Crimefighting Program

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sixteen more federally recognized Native American tribes have been selected by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to participate in the Tribal Access Program for National Crime Information (TAP), which gives tribal governments a way to access and exchange data with national crime information systems, including the FBI’s database, the DOJ announced Sept. 27 in a news release.
September 27, 2022
Judge Keeps Life Sentence For Man Who Killed Woman On North Dakota Reservation

FARGO, N.D. — A life prison sentence stands for a man who killed a woman on an Indian reservation by beating her, strangling her and throwing her off a bridge after a North Dakota federal judge denied his motion to vacate or correct the sentence based in part on his claim that the murder did not happen in Indian country.
September 26, 2022
7th Circuit Upholds Dismissal Of Suit Over Indian’s Eviction Notice

CHICAGO — A federal trial court correctly dismissed for lack of jurisdiction a Native American’s suit seeking to halt his eviction by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) from Indian trust land because there was no “final agency action” to challenge, despite the BIA’s issuance of a trespassing notice, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decided.
September 23, 2022
Cherokee Nation Worker Wins $615,000 For Discharge Over Whistleblower Claims

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — A Cherokee Nation tribal court jury awarded a former employee of the tribe a total of $615,000 in damages after finding that the tribe violated its own Constitution in firing the worker and constructively discharged him by retaliating against him for leveling whistleblower claims over lost grant money.
September 23, 2022
N.D. Tribe’s Council Urges 8th Circuit To Uphold Dismissal Of Fraud, RICO Claims

ST. LOUIS — A federal trial court correctly determined that because a business council for a North Dakota Indian tribe did not waive its sovereign immunity, fraud and racketeering claims leveled by a tribal member’s company that entered into a joint venture with the council cannot proceed, the council tells the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in a Sept. 22 appellee brief.
September 19, 2022
Tribe Petitions Supreme Court Over Bankruptcy Code Waiver Of Immunity

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A divided ruling by the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that the U.S. Bankruptcy Code “unequivocally” abrogates Indian tribes’ sovereign immunity should be vacated because the holding “deepens an acknowledged circuit conflict” and “flouts” U.S. Supreme Court precedents on tribal sovereign immunity, a Wisconsin tribe in a payday lending case tells the high court in a Sept. 8 petition for a writ of certiorari.
September 16, 2022
Negligence Per Se Claim Rejected By N.M. Federal Judge In Mine Blowout Row

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A federal judge in New Mexico on Sept. 8 granted a government contractor judgment on the pleadings that it cannot be held negligent per se in connection with a mine blowout because there is no private cause of action under the state and federal environmental laws invoked in the case.
September 16, 2022
9th Circuit: 1891 Law Allows Alaskan Indian Community To Fish Off-Reservation

SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 8 ruled that an 1891 federal law grants Alaska’s Metlakatla Indian Community the right to fish in off-reservation waters where they have traditionally fished.
September 15, 2022
2 Native American Companies Will Pay New York $56M In Tobacco Taxes

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A New York federal judge on Sept. 13 entered a stipulated judgment resolving a dispute over sale of untaxed cigarettes in New York state between New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Canadian First Peoples cigarette manufacturer and its New York-based distributor, with the two companies agreeing to pay the state more than $56 million.
September 14, 2022
Majority Reverses Ruling In Cherokee Nation’s Favor In COVID-19 Coverage Suit

OKLAHOMA CITY — A majority of the Oklahoma Supreme Court on Sept. 13 held that Cherokee Nation's losses arising from the coronavirus pandemic did not trigger business interruption insurance coverage because the insured “did not sustain immediate, tangible deprivation or destruction of property,” reversing a lower court’s ruling in favor of the insured.
September 09, 2022
9th Circuit: Klamath Water Case Requires Tribes, But They Have Sovereign Immunity

SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 8 affirmed dismissal of a declaratory action by Klamath Project water users because two tribes are required parties but cannot be joined because of their sovereign immunity.
September 06, 2022
Ute Tribe Appeals Dismissal Of Federal Claims Court Water Rights Action

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Native American tribe on Aug. 30 told the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that the Federal Claims Court erred in ruling that the United States had no trust duties to protect the tribe’s water rights on its Utah reservation.
September 06, 2022
Ute Tribe OK’d To File Amended Complaint About Its Federal Water Rights

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah federal magistrate judge on Aug. 22 issued an opinion allowing the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation to file a third amended complaint against the United States and Utah for allegedly discriminating against the tribe’s water rights.
September 06, 2022
Dueling Summary Judgment Motions Filed In Dispute Over Land For Cape Cod Tribe

BOSTON — A 2021 decision by the Department of the Interior to take land into trust for a Massachusetts Indian tribe after originally turning down the request was proper and should be affirmed, the tribe says in a Sept. 2 summary judgment motion in federal court after the local residents who sued over the decision called it “transparently political” in an earlier summary judgment bid.
September 02, 2022
Klamath Project MDL Faces Unanimous Opposition; Movant Cites 2 Other Water MDLs

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While all responding parties on Aug. 24 opposed centralization of seven federal lawsuits involving the United States’ management of water in the Klamath Project in Oregon, the moving Klamath Irrigation District (KID) on Aug. 31 told the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPMDL) that the panel faced the same issues in 2007 and 2003 when it created two MDLs related to federal operation of water systems in Georgia and Missouri.
September 02, 2022
Judge Dismisses Tribe’s Federal Suit Over State Court Contract Row

MARQUETTE, Mich. — A Michigan tribal gaming authority’s federal court bid to halt breach of contract claims brought in state court by two casino development companies based on sovereign immunity is barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA), a federal judge ruled Aug. 24 in granting motions to dismiss.
September 01, 2022
High Court To Consider Petition Of Co-Op That Cut Power To Elderly Tribesman

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 31 set a conference date for a case asking whether the Crow Tribe in Montana has jurisdiction over a nonprofit electric cooperative for allegedly violating tribal law by disconnecting power to an elderly tribal member, after the tribal member and officials waived their right to respond.
September 01, 2022
Sovereign Immunity From Suit ‘Well-Settled,’ Tribe Tells Supreme Court

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A challenge by a former employee of an Oregon Indian tribe to dismissal of her fraud claims against the tribe and tribal officials should be rejected because a California appellate court correctly relied on “well-settled areas of law” in finding the claims barred by tribal sovereign immunity, the tribe and officials argue in an Aug. 24 brief in opposition to the ex-worker’s U.S. Supreme Court petition.
September 01, 2022
No Habeas Relief For Oklahoma Man Claiming Crime Was In Indian Country

MUSKOGEE, Okla. — An Oklahoma federal judge on Aug. 29 dismissed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by a man who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for causing a fatal crash while driving drunk and sought to challenge his state court convictions by claiming that he is a tribal member and the crash happened in Indian country, so the federal government had jurisdiction.
August 31, 2022
Utah Says President Biden Abused Authority With Decision On National Monuments

SALT LAKE CITY — The powers of the president under the Monuments and Antiquities Act and the dimensions of two national monuments, two issues that have been hotly contested across multiple presidential administrations, are once again at issue in litigation as Utah and two counties on Aug. 24 sued President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Utah federal court challenging his decision to reverse his predecessor’s order that decreased the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Bears Ears National Monument, which has implications for potential hydraulic fracturing activity in the region.