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

Mealey's Native American Law

April 10, 2024
N.M. Federal Judge Stays Gold Mine Litigation Between Navajo Nation And Contractor

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A New Mexico federal judge stayed litigation between a government contractor and the Navajo Nation after the parties announced in a joint motion that they had reached a settlement in principle to resolve the tribe’s claims arising from the contractor’s alleged involvement in the Gold King Mine release, which contaminated large portions of tribal land.
April 10, 2024
Tribe Allowed To Supplement Federal Administrative Record In Water Rights Case

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah federal magistrate judge has allowed a Native American tribe to supplement the federal government’s administrative record about how it reached a water contract and how it considered the contract’s effect on the tribe’s water rights.
April 09, 2024
McKinsey MDL Judge OKs $39.5M Settlement Agreement With Tribal Plaintiffs

SAN FRANCISCO — The California federal judge presiding over the McKinsey & Co. opioid promotion multidistrict litigation has signed off on a $39.5 million settlement reached between the consulting company and a group of Native American tribes.
April 09, 2024
Okla. Criminal Appeals Panel Says Osage Reservation Was Disestablished By Congress

OKLAHOMA CITY — A state trial court had proper criminal jurisdiction to convict and sentence a citizen of the Osage Nation for manslaughter that occurred on the tribe’s reservation because the reservation was disestablished by Congress, the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals found in affirming precedent from the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
April 08, 2024
Ill. Federal Judge: City Had ‘Rational Bases’ To Deny Tribal Casino Application

CHICAGO — The Waukegan City Council did not violate the Forest County Potawatomi Community of Wisconsin’s equal protections rights by declining to certify its application to open a casino in the city because the City Council had several rational bases to deny the application, an Illinois federal judge found in granting the city’s motion for summary judgment.
April 08, 2024
Minn. Federal Judge Grants Summary Judgment Against Tribes In Water Quality Dispute

MINNEAPOLIS — Two federally recognized Indian tribes in Minnesota are not entitled to summary judgment on their claims that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by approving revisions to Minnesota’s water quality standards because the agency’s decisions were based on scientific data and analysis.
April 04, 2024
N.D. Federal Judge Dismisses Claims Brought By Indian Group Against NFL Team

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — North Dakota does not have personal jurisdiction to hear claims of defamation and conspiracy brought by a Native American interest group against the National Football League’s Washington Commanders, its operating manager and one of its employees because the defendants have no significant contacts to the state, a North Dakota federal judge found in granting two motions to dismiss the case.
April 04, 2024
U.S. High Court Will Not Consider Challenge To Tribal Trust Land Decision

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for writ of certiorari filed by a group of Massachusetts residents who asked whether the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals erred in finding that the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DOI) decision to take into trust land owned by the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Tribe was not arbitrary or capricious or not in accordance with the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA).
April 03, 2024
Connecticut Panel Affirms Ruling In Insurer’s Favor In Tribe’s Coronavirus Suit

HARTFORD, Conn. — A Connecticut appeals court on April 2 affirmed a lower court’s judgment in favor of an insurer in an Indian tribe’s declaratory judgment lawsuit arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, rejecting the tribe’s contention that the lower court improperly determined that the policy’s contamination exclusion applied to bar the majority of its coverage.
April 02, 2024
Judge Grants Final Approval To $12.5B PFAS Settlement Between 3M, Water Providers

CHARLESTON, S.C. — A federal judge in South Carolina has given final approval to a $12.5 billion class action settlement between 3M Co. and water providers who sued the company alleging that it was liable for contamination of drinking water with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). In the order, the judge said that objections to the deal raised by the Ojibwe Tribe of Native Americans had been addressed.
April 01, 2024
First Nations’ Cigarette Maker Says New Oregon ‘Equity’ Law Violates Due Process

EUGENE, Ore. — A Canadian First Nations-owned cigarette manufacturer filed a suit in Oregon federal court against the state, accusing it of violating due process and the commerce clause by imposing a new nonrefundable payment requirement based on cigarette sales that replaces a decades-old law whereby such payments by cigarette manufacturers went into escrow and were eventually refunded.
March 29, 2024
Montana Supreme Court: Time In Tribal Custody Should Be Credited As Time Served

HELENA, Mont. — A trial court erred in failing to credit time served by a woman who was issued a search warrant while being held in detention by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe because the trial court erroneously held that it lacked jurisdiction over the woman until she was served with the warrant six months after it was issued, the Montana Supreme Court held in reversing the trial court’s judgment.
March 27, 2024
Power Plant On Tribal Land Is Not Exempt From State Taxes, Arizona Panel Finds

PHOENIX — State ad valorem property taxes imposed on a power plant that sits on tribal trust land leased from the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe are not implicitly preempted under U.S. Supreme Court precedent because the tribe does not own any part of the plant and the taxes do not burden the tribe, an Arizona panel held on remand from the Arizona Supreme Court.
March 25, 2024
U.S. Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments Regarding Tribal Health Care Funding

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on March 25 on whether the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDA) requires the Indian Health Service (IHS) to pay “contract support costs” for expenditures of income collected by Indian tribes from third parties under federal self-determination contracts.
March 22, 2024
Fla. High Court: Casinos Can’t Use ‘Extraordinary’ Writ To Challenge Gaming Compact

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Two casinos are not entitled to a writ of quo warranto because their petition essentially challenges the substantive constitutionality of a state statute implementing a gaming compact signed between Florida and the Seminole Tribe of Florida that allows the tribe to operate sports gambling because the writ cannot be used for such substantive challenges, the Florida Supreme Court found in denying the casinos’ petition on March 21.
March 22, 2024
Illinois Federal Judge: Tribal Lending Agreements Violate State Public Policy

CHICAGO — Short-term loan agreements issued by a lender affiliated with the Native Village of Minto are unconscionable and violate Illinois public policy because their exclusive application of tribal law forecloses borrowers’ rights to pursue claims under Illinois law that protect residents from usurious loans, an Illinois federal judge found in denying a motion to compel arbitration of class claims arising from the loan agreements filed by the lender and several affiliated parties that were sued by Illinois borrowers.
March 21, 2024
Tribal Gaming Court Dismisses Wrongful Death Claims Arising From Casino Overdose

UNCASVILLE, Conn. — The father of a man who died after ingesting drugs at a casino operated by the Mohegan Tribe lacks legal standing to bring a claim for wrongful death before the Mohegan Gaming Disputes Trial Court because the man was not legally authorized to bring such claims when he was appointed voluntary administrator of his son’s estate by a New York court, a tribal judge found in granting the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority’s motion to dismiss.
March 19, 2024
Insurers Challenge Ruling That Tribal Court Has Jurisdiction Over Coronavirus Suit

SEATTLE — Insurers asked the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to reconsider its Feb. 29 opinion that affirmed a lower federal court’s finding that a tribal court has subject matter jurisdiction over a coronavirus coverage suit involving tribal properties on tribal land that the Suquamish Tribe brought against “nonmember, off-reservation” insurers that participate in a program that is tailored to and offered exclusively to tribes, arguing that the panel’s “unprecedented expansion of tribal-court jurisdiction warrants rehearing.”
March 15, 2024
In Tribal Land Dispute, 2nd Circuit Refuses To Vacate Trial Court Order

NEW YORK — A federal court did not err in denying a man’s motion to vacate an order in which the trial court found that a disputed piece of land claimed by the man was a part of the Oneida Indian Nation’s reservation in upstate New York because the man’s motion primarily relied on issues already decided in the case, a Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel found in affirming the trial court’s judgment on March 14.
March 13, 2024
FTCA Does Not Apply To Tribal Employee’s Car Accident, Magistrate Judge Says

FRESNO, Calif. — The United States should not be substituted as the defendant in a negligence case brought against a man who allegedly caused a motor vehicle accident in a car owned by the Tule River Indian Tribe because the man was acting outside the scope of his employment and his work for the tribe was not covered by the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), a California federal magistrate judge found in recommending that the man’s motion to dismiss be denied.
March 13, 2024
Tribes And Voters Challenge 8th Circuit’s Discovery Ruling In U.S. Supreme Court

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals erred in finding that North Dakota legislators and a government staffer were entitled to the legislative privilege in a case challenging the states’ most recent redistricting plan as unfair to Native Americans, a group of two tribes and three individual voters argue in a petition for writ of certiorari filed in the U.S. Supreme Court.
March 12, 2024
California Federal Judge Dismisses Claims Arising From Tribal Legal Fee Dispute

SAN DIEGO — A California attorney who sought payment of legal fees from the California Valley Miwok Tribe failed to show that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had a duty to clarify whether a member of the tribe who signed the attorney fee agreement was authorized to act on behalf of the tribe, a California federal judge found in dismissing the attorney’s administrative claims against the agency without prejudice.
March 11, 2024
Okla. Criminal Appeals Court Says Wyandotte Reservation Was Never Disestablished

OKLAHOMA CITY — In applying its own precedent from a case regarding the Ottawa and Peoria Reservations, a majority of the Oklahoma Criminal Appeals Court found that Oklahoma lacked criminal jurisdiction over crimes brought against a Cherokee man who was arrested for drunken driving on the Wyandotte Reservation because the crimes were committed by an Indian in Indian country.
March 11, 2024
Tribal Fire Department Enjoys Sovereign Immunity, Federal Judge Finds

BAY CITY, Mich. — In adopting a report and recommendation, a Michigan federal judge found that the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Fire Department is entitled to sovereign immunity from claims brought against it by a man who asserted that his home was invaded and his constitutional rights were violated by a tribal firefighter who investigated a fire hazard as his former home.
March 11, 2024
E-Cig MDL Judge: ‘Millions Of Fraudulent Claims’ Filed In $45M Altria Settlement

SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge overseeing multidistrict litigation against e-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc. (JLI) and tobacco company Altria Group Inc. and its subsidiaries said at a hearing that he would grant final approval to a $45 million settlement with Altria and is “inclined” to approve a 30% attorney fee award, while also advising plaintiffs’ counsel to contact federal prosecutors regarding “millions of fraudulent claims” that were submitted.