Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-07-05024/USCOURTS-caDC-07-05024-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued May 6, 2008 Decided July 29, 2008 

No. 07-5024 

MARILYN VANN, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

v. 

DIRK KEMPTHORNE, SECRETARY OF THE UNITED STATES 

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

CHEROKEE NATION, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 03cv01711) 

Garret G. Rasmussen argued the cause for appellant.

With him on the briefs were Raymond G. Mullady Jr., Lanny 

J. Davis, and Adam W. Goldberg. Christopher M. O’Connell

entered an appearance. 

Jonathan Velie argued the cause for appellees. With him 

on the brief were Jack McKay, Alvin B. Dunn, Thomas G. 

Allen, and Ellen C. Cohen. 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 1 of 26
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Before: TATEL, GARLAND, and GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH. 

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: The issue on appeal is the 

extent to which sovereign immunity protects a federally 

recognized Indian tribe and its officers against suit. For the 

reasons that follow, we hold that the suit may proceed against 

the tribe’s officers but not against the tribe itself. 

I. 

The Cherokee Nation shares with the United States a 

common stain on its history: the Cherokees owned African 

slaves. At the end of the Civil War, during which the tribe 

sided with the Confederacy, the Cherokee Nation and the 

United States entered into a treaty reestablishing relations. See 

Treaty with the Cherokee, July 19, 1866, 14 Stat. 799 (“1866 

Treaty”). In the treaty, the Cherokee Nation renounced 

slavery and involuntary servitude, and promised to extend “all 

the rights of native Cherokees” to the former Cherokee slaves, 

who came to be known as “Freedmen.” 1866 Treaty, art. IX. 

In 1896, Congress directed the Dawes Commission to 

create membership rolls for the so-called Five Civilized 

Tribes of Oklahoma, which included the Cherokee Nation. 

See Act of June 10, 1896, ch. 398, 29 Stat. 321, 339. The rolls 

for the Cherokees were completed in 1907 and resulted in two 

lists: a “Blood Roll” for native Cherokees, and a “Freedmen 

Roll” for former slaves and their descendants. These lists 

serve an important function because the tribal constitution of 

1976 provides that citizenship in the Cherokee Nation must be 

proven by reference to the Dawes Commission Rolls. The 

citizens of the Cherokee Nation choose their tribal leaders by 

popular election according to procedures approved by the 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 2 of 26
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Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior (“Secretary”). 

See Principal Chiefs Act of 1970, Pub. L. 91-495; see also 

Letter from Neal A. McCaleb, Assistant Sec’y of Indian 

Affairs, U.S. Dep’t of Interior, to Chadwick Smith, Principal 

Chief, Cherokee Nation (Mar. 15, 2002) (reaffirming 

continuing validity of the Principal Chiefs Act), J.A. 150–51; 

Letter from Neal A. McCaleb, Assistant Sec’y of Indian 

Affairs, U.S. Dep’t of Interior, to Chadwick Smith, Principal 

Chief, Cherokee Nation (Apr. 23, 2002) (disavowing letter of 

March 15, 2002, but reaffirming continuing validity of the 

Principal Chiefs Act), J.A. 153–54. 

Marilyn Vann and other descendants of persons listed on 

the Freedmen Roll (collectively, “the Freedmen”) allege they 

were not permitted to vote in two tribal elections because they 

lack an ancestral link to the Blood Roll. In the May 24, 2003 

election, voters reelected Chief Chadwick Smith, chose other 

tribal officers, and amended the tribal constitution to 

eliminate a provision requiring the Secretary’s approval of 

amendments. The July 26, 2003 election saw further 

constitutional amendments and a run-off for tribal officers. 

The Freedmen, protesting their alleged disenfranchisement, 

asked the Secretary to invalidate the May 24 election. The 

Secretary pressed the Cherokee Nation to address the 

Freedmen’s concerns and submit its election procedures for 

federal review. See, e.g., Letter from Jeanette Hanna, 

Regional Director, U.S. Dep’t of Interior, to Chadwick Smith, 

Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation (July 25, 2003) (“The 

[Principal Chiefs Act] provides . . . that the procedures for 

selecting the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation are 

subject to approval by the Secretary of the Interior. We are 

aware of no evidence that the Secretary has approved the 

current procedures for the election of the Principal Chief.”), 

J.A. 194. Except for writing a few letters, the Cherokee 

Nation appears to have done little in response. The Secretary 

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nevertheless recognized Chief Smith’s election on August 6, 

2003, referring any election disputes to the tribal courts. See

Letter from Jeanette Hanna, Regional Director, U.S. Dep’t of 

Interior, to Chadwick Smith, Principal Chief, Cherokee 

Nation (Aug. 6, 2003) (stating that “it is inappropriate and 

premature for the Department to question the validity of the 

election of Tribal officials”), J.A. 199–200. The Secretary 

held the May 24 constitutional amendment under review until 

Chief Smith eventually withdrew the tribe’s request for 

approval of that amendment in June 2006. 

The Freedmen sued the Secretary under the 

Administrative Procedure Act in the United States District 

Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that their 

exclusion from the tribal elections, along with the Secretary’s 

recognition of those elections, violated the Thirteenth 

Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment, the Cherokee 

constitution, the 1866 Treaty, the Principal Chiefs Act, and 

the Indian Civil Rights Act. The Freedmen sought a 

declaratory judgment that the Secretary had behaved 

arbitrarily and capriciously. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). The 

Freedmen also sought to enjoin the Secretary from 

recognizing the results of the 2003 elections, or of any future 

elections from which the Freedmen would be excluded. 

The district court granted the Cherokee Nation leave to 

intervene for the limited purpose of challenging the suit under 

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19. The Cherokee Nation 

then moved to dismiss on the grounds that although it was a 

necessary and indispensable party, sovereign immunity barred 

its joinder.1 See FED. R. CIV. P. 19(b) (“If a person who is 

 

1

 The words “necessary” and “indispensable” have become obsolete 

in the Rule 19 context as a result of stylistic changes to the Rule 

that have occurred since the proceedings in the district court. See 

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required to be joined if feasible [as defined in subparagraph 

(a)] cannot be joined, the court must determine whether, in 

equity and good conscience, the action should proceed among 

the existing parties or should be dismissed.”). The Freedmen 

responded with a motion for leave to file an amended 

complaint naming as defendants the Cherokee Nation, Chief 

Smith, and other tribal officers, all of whom were alleged to 

have violated the Thirteenth Amendment and the 1866 Treaty. 

After determining that the tribe was a necessary party under 

Rule 19(a), the district court concluded that the tribe and its 

officers could be joined because the tribe did not enjoy 

sovereign immunity against the Freedmen’s suit. Accordingly, 

the district court denied the motion to dismiss and granted the 

motion for leave to file. 

The Cherokee Nation appeals the denial of its motion to 

dismiss on sovereign immunity grounds. Under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1291 and the collateral order doctrine, we may hear an 

interlocutory appeal from the denial of such a motion. See 

Kilburn v. Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, 376 

F.3d 1123, 1126 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (citing P.R. Aqueduct & 

Sewer Auth. v. Metcalf & Eddy, Inc., 506 U.S. 139, 144 

(1993), and Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 

541, 546 (1949)); Wisconsin v. Ho-Chunk Nation, 512 F.3d 

921, 928 (7th Cir. 2008) (“A district court’s determination 

that a tribe’s sovereign immunity has been waived by the tribe 

or abrogated by Congress falls within the ambit of the 

collateral order doctrine . . . .”). We review de novo the 

district court’s conclusion that the Cherokee Nation and its 

officers do not enjoy tribal sovereign immunity. See Cherokee 

Nation v. Babbitt, 117 F.3d 1489, 1497–98 (D.C. Cir. 1997). 

 

Republic of Philippines v. Pimentel, No. 06-1204, slip op. at 2 (U.S. 

June 12, 2008) (noting the replacement in Rule 19 of “necessary” 

with “required,” and the deletion of “indispensable”). 

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II. 

Indian tribes did not relinquish their status as sovereigns 

with the creation and expansion of the republic on the North 

American continent. The courts of the United States have long 

recognized that the tribes once were, and remain still, 

independent political societies. E.g., Worcester v. Georgia, 31 

U.S. (6 Pet.) 515, 556–57 (1832); Cherokee Nation v. 

Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Pet.) 1, 16–17 (1831). “Perhaps the most 

basic principle of all Indian law, supported by a host of 

decisions, is that those powers lawfully vested in an Indian 

nation are not, in general, delegated powers granted by 

express acts of Congress, but rather ‘inherent powers of a 

limited sovereignty which has never been extinguished.’ ” 

FELIX S. COHEN’S HANDBOOK OF FEDERAL INDIAN LAW

§ 4.01[1][a], at 206 (Nell Jessup Newton ed., 2005) 

[hereinafter, COHEN’S HANDBOOK] (quoting United States v. 

Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313, 322–23 (1978)). That said, Congress 

may whittle away tribal sovereignty as it sees fit. See Santa 

Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 56 (1978) (noting that 

“Congress has plenary authority to limit, modify or eliminate 

the powers of local self-government which the tribes 

otherwise possess”); Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 322 (noting that 

tribes are “subject to ultimate federal control”); Fisher v. 

District Court, 424 U.S. 382, 390 (1976) (referring to tribes’ 

“quasi-sovereign status”); United States v. Kagama, 118 U.S. 

375, 381 (1886) (referring to tribes as “semi-independent”);

Cherokee Nation, 30 U.S. (5 Pet.) at 17 (referring to tribes as 

“domestic dependent nations” whose “relation to the United 

States resembles that of a ward to his guardian”). 

As sovereigns, Indian tribes enjoy immunity against suits. 

Kiowa Tribe v. Mfg. Techs., Inc., 523 U.S. 751, 754 (1998); 

Okla. Tax Comm’n v. Citizen Band Potawatomi Indian Tribe, 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 6 of 26
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498 U.S. 505, 509 (1991); Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 

58–59; Puyallup Tribe, Inc. v. Dep’t of Game, 433 U.S. 165, 

172 (1977); United States v. U.S. Fid. & Guar. Co., 309 U.S. 

506, 512 (1940); Wichita & Affiliated Tribes v. Hodel, 788 

F.2d 765, 771 (D.C. Cir. 1986). This immunity flows from a 

tribe’s sovereign status in much the same way as it does for 

the States2 and for the federal government. See Seminole 

Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 54 (1996) (noting the 

“presupposition . . . that ‘ “[i]t is inherent in the nature of 

sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual 

without its consent” ’ ”) (quoting Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 

1, 13 (1890) (quoting THE FEDERALIST No. 81 (Alexander 

Hamilton) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961))). Congress’s power to 

limit the scope of a tribe’s sovereignty extends to tribal 

sovereign immunity. “This aspect of tribal sovereignty, like 

all others, is subject to the superior and plenary control of 

Congress.” Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 58; see also 

Okla. Tax Comm’n, 498 U.S. at 510 (“Congress has always 

been at liberty to dispense with such tribal immunity or to 

limit it.”). But abrogation of tribal sovereign immunity 

requires an explicit and unequivocal statement to that effect. 

C & L Enters., Inc. v. Citizen Band Potawatomi Indian Tribe, 

532 U.S. 411, 418 (2001) (“To abrogate tribal immunity, 

Congress must ‘unequivocally’ express that purpose.”) 

(quoting Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 58); Cherokee 

Nation, 117 F.3d at 1498 (“Any waiver of a tribe’s sovereign 

immunity, whether by Congress or by the tribe itself, ‘cannot 

be implied but must be unequivocally expressed.’ ”) (quoting 

Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 58). 

Has there been an abrogation of tribal sovereign 

immunity in our case? The district court concluded that 

 

2

 The States also count the Eleventh Amendment as a source of 

sovereign immunity. See U.S. CONST. amend. XI. 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 7 of 26
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“Congress clearly indicated its intent to abrogate the 

Cherokee Nation’s immunity with respect to violations of the 

Thirteenth Amendment as evidenced by the Treaty of 1866.” 

Vann v. Kempthorne, 467 F. Supp. 2d 56, 70 (D.D.C. 2006). 

The district court reasoned as follows. See id. at 66–70. The 

Thirteenth Amendment, which applies to Indian tribes, 

eradicates the badges and incidents of slavery. The 1866 

Treaty implements similar principles for the Cherokee Nation. 

See 1866 Treaty, art. IX (abolishing slavery and granting 

Freedmen “all the rights of native Cherokees”); id. art. VI 

(declaring that the Cherokee Nation’s laws “shall be uniform 

throughout said nation”); id. art. XII (acknowledging 

supremacy of federal law). Later historical developments, 

including an 1888 statute forcing the Cherokee Nation to 

share its assets with the Freedmen, further demonstrate 

Congress’s intent to protect the Freedmen against 

discrimination. “By repeatedly imposing such limitations on 

the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation in order to protect the 

Freedmen, Congress has unequivocally indicated its intent to 

abrogate the tribe’s immunity with regard to racial oppression 

prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment.” Vann, 467 F. 

Supp. 2d at 69. Denying the Freedmen the right to vote in 

tribal elections violates the Thirteenth Amendment and the 

1866 Treaty, so the Cherokee Nation cannot claim tribal 

sovereign immunity against a suit complaining of such a 

badge and incident of slavery. 

The district court is mistaken to treat every imposition 

upon tribal sovereignty as an abrogation of tribal sovereign 

immunity.3

 Sovereignty and immunity are related, Alden v. 

 

3

 The Freedmen make a similar error in arguing that the “overriding 

interest” of the United States implicitly abrogates tribal sovereign 

immunity. Freedmen’s Br. at 9–15 (citing Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 

323; Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191, 209–10 

(1978); Washington v. Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 8 of 26
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Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 715 (1999), the latter being an attribute 

of the former, P.R. Aqueduct & Sewer Auth., 506 U.S. at 146. 

But it is possible to cut back sovereignty in a way that leaves 

sovereign immunity intact. Cf. Kiowa Tribe, 523 U.S. at 755 

(“To say substantive state laws apply to off-reservation 

conduct, however, is not to say that a tribe no longer enjoys 

immunity from suit. . . . There is a difference between the 

right to demand compliance with state laws and the means 

available to enforce them.”). Congress can impose substantive 

constraints upon a tribe without subjecting the tribe to suit in 

federal court to enforce those constraints, as the Supreme 

Court made clear in Santa Clara Pueblo. In that case, an 

individual Indian sued her tribe in federal court, alleging 

gender discrimination in violation of the equal protection 

guarantee of the Indian Civil Rights Act (“ICRA”), 25 U.S.C. 

§ 1302. Despite the ICRA’s imposition of substantive 

constraints upon the tribe, the Supreme Court held the suit 

barred by tribal sovereign immunity and sent the plaintiff to 

pursue her claim in tribal court. See 436 U.S. at 58–59; see 

also Nero v. Cherokee Nation, 892 F.2d 1457, 1461 (10th Cir. 

1989) (noting the Santa Clara Pueblo distinction between a 

substantive constraint and an abrogation of sovereign 

immunity). Absent explicit and unequivocal language to the 

contrary, the imposition of substantive constraints upon a 

tribe’s sovereignty cannot be interpreted as an abrogation of 

its sovereign immunity. 

We must determine for ourselves whether anything in the 

Thirteenth Amendment or the 1866 Treaty worked an 

abrogation of the Cherokee Nation’s sovereign immunity. 

 

Reservation, 447 U.S. 134, 153 (1980)). The cases cited speak to 

implicit limitations on tribal sovereignty and have nothing to do 

with tribal sovereign immunity, which is not subject to implicit 

abrogation. Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 58. 

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Again, we will only acknowledge such an abrogation if the 

text is express and unequivocal. See Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 

U.S. at 59 (holding the ICRA not to abrogate tribal sovereign 

immunity because “[n]othing on the face of Title I of the 

ICRA purports to subject tribes to the jurisdiction of the 

federal courts in civil actions for injunctive or declaratory 

relief”); Fla. Paraplegic, Ass’n v. Miccosukee Tribe, 166 F.3d 

1126, 1131 (11th Cir. 1999) (holding the Americans with 

Disabilities Act not to abrogate tribal sovereign immunity and 

declaring, “Congress abrogates tribal immunity only where 

the definitive language of the statute itself states an intent 

either to abolish Indian tribes’ common law immunity or to 

subject tribes to suit under the act”); Bassett v. Mashantucket 

Pequot Tribe, 204 F.3d 343, 357 (2d Cir. 2000) (holding the 

Copyright Act not to abrogate tribal sovereign immunity, 

where nothing on the statute’s face could be so construed).4

We find no express and unequivocal abrogation of the 

Cherokee Nation’s sovereign immunity in the texts upon 

 

4

 For examples of statutes that satisfy the abrogation standard, see 

COHEN’S HANDBOOK, § 7.05[1][b] (citing, inter alia, the Indian 

Depredation Act, 26 Stat. 851 (1891) (conferring jurisdiction upon 

Court of Claims to adjudicate “All claims for property of citizens of 

the United States taken or destroyed by Indians belonging to any 

band, tribe, or nation, in amity with the United States, without just 

cause or provocation on the part of the owner or agent in charge, 

and not returned or paid for”); the ICRA’s habeas corpus provision, 

25 U.S.C. § 1303 (“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall 

be available to any person, in a court of the United States, to test the 

legality of his detention by order of an Indian tribe.”); and the 

Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 25 U.S.C. § 2710(d)(7)(A)(ii) 

(“The United States district courts shall have jurisdiction over . . . 

any cause of action initiated by a State or Indian tribe to enjoin a 

class III gaming activity located on Indian lands and conducted in 

violation of any Tribal-State compact . . . .”)). 

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which the Freedmen rely. Nothing in § 1 of the Thirteenth 

Amendment so much as hints at a federal court suit by a 

private party to enforce the prohibition against badges and 

incidents of slavery against Indian tribes. U.S. CONST. amend. 

XIII, § 1 (“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except 

as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been 

duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any 

place subject to their jurisdiction.”). Although § 2 of the 

Thirteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to generate 

express and unequivocal language abrogating tribal sovereign 

immunity to allow for such suits, that promise remains 

unfulfilled absent some further legislative enactment. Id. § 2 

(“Congress shall have power to enforce this article by 

appropriate legislation.”). The 1866 Treaty similarly lacks any 

clear abrogation of tribal sovereign immunity, as the Tenth 

Circuit correctly concluded in Nero, 892 F.2d at 1461. The 

Freedmen point to articles VI, IX, and XII of the 1866 Treaty, 

but these say nothing about federal court suits against the 

Cherokee Nation. 

The Freedmen argue that our search for intent to abrogate 

is misguided because the Thirteenth Amendment and the 1866 

Treaty predate the doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity, such 

that the drafters of those texts could not have foreseen the 

interpretive rule requiring express and unequivocal 

abrogation. Freedmen’s Br. at 15–20. This argument 

misapprehends the nature of tribal sovereign immunity, which 

is not the product of any enactment but an inherent attribute 

of a tribe’s sovereignty. Tribal sovereign immunity existed at 

the Founding, as surely as did tribal sovereignty, and our only 

concern is whether the Thirteenth Amendment or the 1866 

Treaty later abrogated that immunity. The unequivocalabrogation rule reflects the belief, as true in the nineteenth 

century as it is today, that lawmakers do not lightly discard 

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sovereign immunity. We see no reason to depart from the 

established interpretive rule based on the vintage of the texts. 

Because nothing in the Thirteenth Amendment or the 

1866 Treaty amounts to an express and unequivocal 

abrogation of tribal sovereign immunity, the Cherokee Nation 

cannot be joined in the Freedmen’s federal court suit without 

the tribe’s consent. We reverse the district court’s 

determination to the contrary. 

III. 

Having found the tribe’s sovereign immunity intact, we 

must now assess whether tribal officers enjoy the same 

immunity from suit as does the tribe itself. We do not 

approach this question from scratch, for Ex parte Young, 209 

U.S. 123 (1908), and related cases have come to apply to 

questions of tribal sovereign immunity. See Santa Clara 

Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 59 (citing Ex parte Young); Bassett, 204 

F.3d at 358 (citing Ex parte Young); Tenneco Oil Co. v. Sac & 

Fox Tribe of Indians, 725 F.2d 572, 574 (10th Cir. 1984) 

(citing Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 

U.S. 682 (1949)); cf. Recent Case, 79 HARV. L. REV. 851, 852 

(1966) (suggesting extension of Ex parte Young to tribal 

sovereign immunity context). 

“The basic doctrine of Ex parte Young can be simply 

stated. A federal court is not barred by the Eleventh 

Amendment from enjoining state officers from acting 

unconstitutionally, either because their action is alleged to 

violate the Constitution directly or because it is contrary to a 

federal statute or regulation that is the supreme law of the 

land.” 17A CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT ET AL., FEDERAL 

PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 4232 (3d ed. 2007) [hereinafter 

WRIGHT & MILLER] (citations omitted). In Ex parte Young, a 

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private party was allowed to pursue an injunction in federal 

court against Minnesota’s attorney general to prohibit his 

enforcement of a state statute alleged to violate the Fourteenth 

Amendment. This result rested upon the fiction that the suit 

went against the officer and not the State, thereby avoiding 

sovereign immunity’s bar. Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. 

Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 114 n.25 (1984) (noting the fiction); 

Kenneth Culp Davis, Suing the Government by Falsely 

Pretending to Sue an Officer, 29 U. CHI. L. REV. 435 (1962) 

(same). The officer, so the reasoning goes, cannot take refuge 

in the State’s immunity if he contravenes federal law, and is 

“stripped of his official or representative character and . . . 

subjected in his person to the consequences of his individual 

conduct.” Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. at 159–60. The Supreme 

Court recently confirmed the ease with which this stripping 

rationale can be applied. “In determining whether the doctrine 

of Ex parte Young avoids an Eleventh Amendment bar to suit, 

a court need only conduct a straightforward inquiry into 

whether [the] complaint alleges an ongoing violation of 

federal law and seeks relief properly characterized as 

prospective.” Verizon Md. Inc. v. Pub. Serv. Comm’n, 535 

U.S. 635, 645 (2002) (citation and quotation marks omitted). 

Applying the principle of Ex parte Young in the matter 

before us, we think it clear that tribal sovereign immunity 

does not bar the suit against tribal officers. Santa Clara 

Pueblo, which relied on Ex parte Young to hold a tribal 

officer “not protected by the tribe’s immunity from suit,”

dictates this result. See 436 U.S. at 59. The Freedmen allege 

that the Cherokee Nation’s officers are in violation of the 

Thirteenth Amendment and the 1866 Treaty, and seek an 

injunction preventing Chief Smith “from holding further 

elections without a vote of all citizens, including the 

Freedmen.” Pls.’ Second Am. Compl. ¶ 74, J.A. 138. Faced 

with allegations of ongoing constitutional and treaty 

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violations, and a prospective request for injunctive relief, 

officers of the Cherokee Nation cannot seek shelter in the 

tribe’s sovereign immunity. 

In an attempt to avoid the straightforward application of 

Ex parte Young, the Cherokee Nation raises three arguments, 

which we consider in turn. Finding none of them persuasive, 

we conclude that sovereign immunity is no bar to the 

Freedmen’s suit against the tribe’s officers, and therefore 

affirm the district court’s determination to the same effect. 

A. 

Invoking Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce 

Corp., 337 U.S. 682 (1949), the Cherokee Nation argues that 

tribal sovereign immunity bars the suit against its officers 

because the requested relief really runs against the tribe itself. 

This is reminiscent of the losing argument in Ex parte Young. 

See 209 U.S. at 142, 149 (rejecting state officer’s “objection 

. . . that the suit is, in effect, one against the State of 

Minnesota”). The argument is no more persuasive a century 

later. Due to an unfortunate footnote in the Larson opinion, 

however, we must explain our reasoning at some length. 

Larson involved a contract dispute between the federal 

War Assets Administration and a private party to whom it had 

sold surplus coal, the Domestic & Foreign Commerce 

Corporation. The War Assets Administration understood the 

contract of sale to require payment in advance of delivery of 

the coal. When the Corporation insisted instead on depositing 

the funds upon receipt, the War Assets Administration 

considered the contract breached and sold the coal to a third 

party. The Corporation sued in federal court for declaratory 

and injunctive relief to prevent the federal Administrator from 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 14 of 26
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delivering the coal to the third party, claiming entitlement to 

the coal under the original contract of sale. 

The Supreme Court considered whether the sovereign 

immunity of the United States barred the suit against a federal 

officer. The Court acknowledged Ex parte Young’s stripping 

rationale, albeit with no direct citation to that case. 

There may be, of course, suits for specific relief 

against officers of the sovereign which are not suits 

against the sovereign. . . . [W]here the officer’s 

powers are limited by statute, his actions beyond those 

limitations are considered individual and not sovereign 

actions. . . . His actions are ultra vires his authority 

and therefore may be made the object of specific 

relief. . . . A second type of case is that in which the 

statute or order conferring power upon the officer to 

take action in the sovereign’s name is claimed to be 

unconstitutional. . . . Here, too, the conduct against 

which specific relief is sought is beyond the officer’s 

powers and is, therefore, not the conduct of the 

sovereign. . . . These two types have frequently been 

recognized by this Court as the only ones in which a 

restraint may be obtained against the conduct of 

Government officials. 

Larson, 337 U.S. at 689–90 (citing Phila. Co. v. Stimson, 223 

U.S. 605, 620 (1912) (citing Ex parte Young)); see also id. at 

704 (“Under our constitutional system, certain rights are 

protected against governmental action and, if such rights are 

infringed by the actions of officers of the Government, it is 

proper that the courts have the power to grant relief against 

those actions.”). The stripping rationale did not apply to the 

Administrator because the Corporation’s breach-of-contract 

claim did not show him to have acted outside his authority. 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 15 of 26
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See id. at 691–92. Accordingly, the Court held the suit barred 

by federal sovereign immunity, concluding that the suit was 

actually against the United States and not its officer. Id. at 

687–88. 

Given the obvious distinction between our own case and 

the one just described, the Cherokee Nation’s reliance on 

Larson seems curious. Unlike the federal officer in Larson, 

who was only alleged to have breached a contract, the tribal 

officers in our case are said to have violated the Thirteenth 

Amendment and the 1866 Treaty. These allegations bring our 

case within the stripping rationale set forth in Ex parte Young

and described in Larson, such that tribal sovereign immunity 

should not bar the Freedmen’s suit against the officers of the 

Cherokee Nation. 

Undeterred, the Cherokee Nation pins its hopes to 

footnote 11 of the Larson opinion, which provides: 

Of course, a suit may fail, as one against the 

sovereign, even if it is claimed that the officer being 

sued has acted unconstitutionally or beyond his 

statutory powers, if the relief requested can not be 

granted by merely ordering the cessation of the 

conduct complained of but will require affirmative 

action by the sovereign or the disposition of 

unquestionably sovereign property. North Carolina v. 

Temple, 134 U.S. 22 (1890). 

Larson, 337 U.S. at 691 n.11. The Cherokee Nation claims 

that the Freedmen improperly seek “affirmative action” on the 

part of tribal officers. The Second Amended Complaint 

requests an injunction preventing Chief Smith “from holding 

further elections without a vote of all citizens, including the 

Freedmen.” Pls.’ Second Am. Compl. ¶ 74, J.A. 138. 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 16 of 26
17 

According to the tribe, this injunction “would restrain the 

Nation from holding its elections and require the Nation to 

take action to amend its constitution and voting laws to 

include Plaintiffs as citizens with voting rights.” Cherokee 

Nation’s Br. at 50. At oral argument, counsel for the tribe said 

further, “what the relief would do is, it would paralyze the 

Nation, it would stop the Nation from having any elections, 

unless the Nation took affirmative steps to amend its 

constitution.” Oral Arg. Recording at 8:27–8:37. Citing 

decisions of our sister circuits, Fletcher v. United States, 116 

F.3d 1315, 1324 (10th Cir. 1997); Shermoen v. United States, 

982 F.2d 1312, 1320 (9th Cir. 1992), the tribe tells us that 

“[t]he Ex parte Young fiction simply does not survive 

Plaintiffs’ requested relief.” Cherokee Nation’s Br. at 50. 

Whatever the Larson Court meant when it referred to 

“affirmative action,” we conclude that this dicta does not limit 

the force of Ex parte Young in the case at hand. We begin 

with an examination of footnote 11, a Delphic pronouncement 

that has been the subject of great judicial and scholarly 

attention. See, e.g., Knight v. New York, 443 F.2d 415, 420 

(2d Cir. 1971) (Friendly, J.) (“The Larson footnote has 

become the subject of microscopic scholarly scrutiny.”); 

David P. Currie, Sovereign Immunity and Suits Against 

Government Officers, 1984 SUP. CT. REV. 149, 158 (“There 

was a grain of truth in this wholly gratuitous dictum, but its 

principal effect was to sow confusion.”); David L. Shapiro, 

Wrong Turns: The Eleventh Amendment and the Pennhurst 

Case, 98 HARV. L. REV. 61, 74 n.80 (1984) (referring to “the 

Larson Court’s troublesome footnote 11”); Antonin Scalia, 

Sovereign Immunity and Nonstatutory Review of Federal 

Administrative Action: Some Conclusions from the PublicLands Cases, 68 MICH. L. REV. 867, 875 n.32 (1970) (noting 

the possible significance of the Supreme Court’s failure to 

cite footnote 11 in Malone v. Bowdoin, 369 U.S. 643 (1962), 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 17 of 26
18 

which otherwise relied heavily on Larson). We then consider 

whether the supposed prohibition against “affirmative action” 

in footnote 11 reaches the Freedmen’s suit. 

Before going any further, however, we note that the 

continuing force of Larson’s footnote 11 is not free from 

doubt. The Supreme Court did not mention the supposed 

prohibition against “affirmative action” in its recent treatment 

of the Ex parte Young doctrine in Verizon, 535 U.S. at 645–

48, its discussion of tribal sovereign immunity in Santa Clara 

Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 58–59, or its decisions allowing 

affirmative injunctions against state officers under Ex parte 

Young, e.g., Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267 (1977). Illpositioned as we are to issue retractions for the highest court 

in the land, we will assume arguendo that footnote 11 is not a 

dead letter circa 2008. But our discussion should not be 

mistaken for an endorsement of its continuing vitality, and 

any court that would rely on footnote 11 to bar an Ex parte 

Young suit would have to grapple with the issue of its possible 

obsolescence. 

Taking a cue from Professor Jaffe, we begin by noting 

the Court’s use of may — as in, “a suit may fail . . . if the 

relief requested . . . will require affirmative action by the 

sovereign,” Larson, 337 U.S. at 691 n.11 (emphasis added) — 

rather than more commanding alternatives like must or will or 

shall. Louis L. Jaffe, Suits Against Governments and Officers: 

Sovereign Immunity, 77 HARV. L. REV. 1, 34 (1963) (noting 

that if “may is read as may and not as must, it is 

unobjectionable,” but that a contrary reading would place 

footnote 11 at odds with “well-established doctrines”). Only 

by embracing this equivocation can we read footnote 11 in 

harmony with prior pronouncements. Consider the following 

statement from Ex parte Young: “There is no doubt that the 

court cannot control the exercise of the discretion of an 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 18 of 26
19 

officer. It can only direct affirmative action where the officer 

having some duty to perform not involving discretion, but 

merely ministerial in its nature, refuses or neglects to take 

such action. In that case the court can direct the defendant to 

perform this merely ministerial duty.” 209 U.S. at 158 

(emphasis added) (citing Bd. of Liquidation v. McComb, 92 

U.S. 531, 541 (1875)). This language suggests that 

“affirmative action” is not universally condemned in suits 

against officers, and that some “affirmative action” is 

permissible. Footnote 11 is not to the contrary, provided we 

read may to mean what it says. 

What, then, of that type of “affirmative action” that 

Larson purports to forbid? Footnote 11 cites a single case, 

North Carolina v. Temple, 134 U.S. 22 (1890), which 

concerned a private bondholder’s suit to compel a state 

auditor to levy a tax, the proceeds of which would be used to 

pay interest to holders of state bonds. In a half-page opinion, 

the Supreme Court dismissed the suit on sovereign immunity 

grounds. Id. at 30 (“We think it perfectly clear that the suit 

against the auditor in this case was virtually a suit against the 

State of North Carolina. In this regard it comes within the 

principle of the cases of [Jumel], [Cunningham], [Hagood], 

and [In re Ayers].”). Temple, in turn, cited four cases 

involving bondholders. See Louisiana v. Jumel, 107 U.S. 711, 

720–23 (1883) (holding that sovereign immunity prevents 

mandamus action to compel state officers to levy a tax to pay 

bondholders); Cunningham v. Macon & Brunswick R.R. Co., 

109 U.S. 446, 450–57 (1883) (holding that sovereign 

immunity prevents bondholders’ foreclosure suit); Hagood v. 

Southern, 117 U.S. 52, 65–71 (1886) (holding that sovereign 

immunity prevents suit to compel state comptroller general to 

levy a tax to fund redemption of revenue bond scrip); In re 

Ayers, 123 U.S. 443, 497–98, 502–03 (1887) (holding that 

sovereign immunity prevents suit to enjoin state officer from 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 19 of 26
20 

bringing tax collection suits against persons who had paid 

taxes with bond coupons, where such collection was alleged 

to breach bondholder’s contract, and where specific 

performance of acceptance of coupons was requested). 

These cases, from whence came Larson’s prohibition 

against “affirmative action,” reflect a familiar limitation on 

judicial power. A private party cannot by judicial decree force 

a state officer to levy a tax because to do so would “require, 

by affirmative official action on the part of the defendants, the 

performance of an obligation which belongs to the State in its 

political capacity.” Hagood, 117 U.S. at 70. In compelling an 

officer to levy a tax, the court would “assum[e] the control of 

the administration of the fiscal affairs of the State to the 

extent that may be necessary to accomplish the end in view.” 

Jumel, 107 U.S. at 722. Such an attempt to control an officer 

would place the court on the wrong side of the line thought to 

divide “discretionary” from “ministerial” functions. See 

Hagood, 117 U.S. at 69 (“ ‘[A] court cannot substitute its own 

discretion for that of executive officers in matters belonging 

to the proper jurisdiction of the latter.’ ”) (quoting Bd. of 

Liquidation, 92 U.S. at 542). 

Hawaii v. Gordon, 373 U.S. 57 (1963) (per curiam), a 

case upon which counsel for the Cherokee Nation relied at 

oral argument, shows the principle at work. In Gordon, the 

federal Director of the Bureau of the Budget had advised 

federal agencies that the United States was not obliged by the 

Hawaii Statehood Act to convey certain federal land to that 

State. Hawaii sued the Director, “seeking to obtain an order 

requiring him to withdraw this advice to the federal agencies, 

determine whether a certain 203 acres of land in Hawaii . . . 

was land or properties ‘needed by the United States’ and, if 

not needed, to convey this land to Hawaii.” Id. at 58 (quoting 

the statute). The Supreme Court dismissed the suit on 

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21 

sovereign immunity grounds. Id. In addition to condemning 

the impropriety of using judicial processes to wrest land from 

the United States, the Court also noted with disapproval that 

“the order requested would require the Director’s official 

affirmative action.” Id. This disposition echoed the Solicitor 

General’s argument that Hawaii was requesting prohibited 

“affirmative action” because the Director, acting in his 

personal capacity, lacked the authority to cancel an official 

report concerning sovereign property and issue a new one. See 

Brief in Opposition to Motion for Leave to File Complaint 

20–23, 1962 WL 107667 (June 18, 1962) (citing, inter alia, 

Larson’s footnote 11). 

Whatever the precise meaning of “affirmative action,” we 

think it clear that the Freedmen’s suit against the Cherokee 

Nation does not run afoul of the prohibition as used in 

footnote 11. The Second Amended Complaint contains a 

single request for relief against an officer: an injunction 

preventing Chief Smith “from holding further elections 

without a vote of all citizens, including the Freedmen.” Pls.’ 

Second Am. Compl. ¶ 74, J.A. 138. This relief, if granted, 

would not oblige the tribe’s officer to use his discretionary 

authority to comply with the injunction. To the contrary, it 

would prevent the officer from exercising any such authority 

in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment or the 1866 Treaty. 

The Cherokee Nation complains that the requested relief will 

require amendments to the tribe’s constitution and voting 

laws, but the Freedmen do not call for any such changes on 

the part of the tribe’s officers in their Second Amended 

Complaint. That the tribe might ultimately amend its 

constitution to bring its elections into conformance with 

federal law is irrelevant to our sovereign immunity analysis, 

because any such change would not be the direct result of 

judicial compulsion. If the tribe pursues these changes, its 

discretion will not be steered by the judicial hand. The 

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22 

Freedmen’s suit falls squarely within the principle of Ex parte 

Young. See 209 U.S. at 159 (“The general discretion regarding 

the enforcement of the laws when and as he deems 

appropriate is not interfered with by an injunction which 

restrains the state officer from taking any steps towards the 

enforcement of an unconstitutional enactment to the injury of 

complainant. In such case no affirmative action of any nature 

is directed, and the officer is simply prohibited from doing an 

act which he had no legal right to do. An injunction to prevent 

him from doing that which he has no legal right to do is not an 

interference with the discretion of an officer.”). 

At bottom, the Cherokee Nation’s reliance on footnote 11 

and similar pronouncements reflects wishful thinking.5

 The 

tribe imagines a world where Ex parte Young suits cannot 

proceed if they will have any effect on a sovereign. But that is 

what Ex parte Young suits have always done. See, e.g., 

Milliken, 433 U.S. at 288–90 (relying on Ex parte Young in 

suit to desegregate public schools); Griffin v. County Sch. Bd., 

377 U.S. 218, 228 (1964) (same); Orleans Parish Sch. Bd. v. 

 

5

 The tribe quotes two cases with similar language. See Gordon, 

373 U.S. at 58 (“The general rule is that relief sought nominally 

against an officer is in fact against the sovereign if the decree would 

operate against the latter. Here the order requested would require 

the [federal officer’s] official affirmative action, affect the public 

administration of government agencies and cause as well the 

disposition of property admittedly belonging to the United States. 

The complaint is therefore dismissed.”) (citations omitted); 

Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp., 465 U.S. at 101 n.11 (“The general 

rule is that a suit is against the sovereign if ‘the judgment sought 

would expend itself on the public treasury or domain, or interfere 

with the public administration,’ or if the effect of the judgment 

would be ‘to restrain the Government from acting, or to compel it 

to act.’ ”) (quoting Dugan v. Rank, 372 U.S. 609, 620 (1963) 

(internal quotation marks omitted)). 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 22 of 26
23 

Bush, 242 F.2d 156, 160–61 (5th Cir. 1957) (same); Sch. Bd. 

v. Allen, 240 F.2d 59, 62–63 (4th Cir. 1956) (same). To credit 

the tribe’s position would be to conclude that Larson

overruled Ex parte Young in dicta, in a footnote, without even 

citing the case. We doubt whether a case of such monumental 

importance could have come to rest in such a shallow grave. 

See 17A WRIGHT & MILLER, supra, § 4231 (“Indeed it is not 

extravagant to argue that Ex parte Young is one of the three 

most important decisions the Supreme Court of the United 

States has ever handed down.”). The Supreme Court 

mentioned no such change when it recently “confirmed that 

the core of the Young doctrine is still alive and well.” 

RICHARD H. FALLON, JR. ET AL., HART AND WECHSLER’S THE 

FEDERAL COURTS AND THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 1028 (5th ed. 

2003) (citing Verizon, 535 U.S. 635). We therefore reject the 

Cherokee Nation’s argument. 

B. 

The Cherokee Nation’s next attempt to fend off Ex parte 

Young relies on Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. at 73–76. 

In that case, a tribe sued a State and its officers under a 

provision of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (“IGRA”) 

purporting to abrogate state sovereign immunity. After 

concluding that Congress lacked power under Article I so to 

abrogate, id. at 57–73, the Seminole Tribe Court considered 

the tribe’s contention that the suit could proceed against state 

officers under Ex parte Young. The Court rejected this 

argument because the IGRA provided for a remedial scheme 

against the States that was more limited in scope than would 

have been a suit under Ex parte Young. See Seminole Tribe, 

517 U.S. at 74 (“[W]here Congress has prescribed a detailed 

remedial scheme for the enforcement against a State of a 

statutorily created right, a court should hesitate before casting 

USCA Case #07-5024 Document #1130149 Filed: 07/29/2008 Page 23 of 26
24 

aside those limitations and permitting an action against a state 

officer based upon Ex parte Young.”). 

This Seminole Tribe exception applies if we can discern 

an intent to displace Ex parte Young suits through the 

establishment of a more limited remedial regime. See Verizon, 

535 U.S. at 647–48. The Cherokee Nation argues that article 

VII of the 1866 Treaty provides such a remedial scheme 

against the tribe, thereby foreclosing suits against the tribe’s 

officers. But the treaty provision in question, which opens the 

federal courts to suits between “inhabitant[s]” of two different 

districts within the tribe’s territory, does not by its terms 

provide for any type of suit against the tribe itself. As the 

Cherokee Nation itself argues elsewhere in its briefs, the tribe 

is not an “inhabitant” of its own territory. Cherokee Nation’s 

Br. at 26. The 1866 Treaty does not provide for any remedial 

scheme against the Cherokee Nation, much less a “detailed 

remedial scheme,” so the Seminole Tribe argument fails. 

C. 

Finally, the Cherokee Nation argues that the Freedmen 

cannot pursue their claims under Ex parte Young because the 

requested relief “implicates special sovereignty interests.” 

Idaho v. Couer d’Alene Tribe, 521 U.S. 261, 281 (1997). In 

Couer d’Alene, the Supreme Court held that Ex parte Young

did not allow a tribe to sue state officers for infringing upon 

tribal property rights in violation of federal law, reasoning 

that control of submerged lands was a core sovereign interest 

of the State. The Cherokee Nation contends that its special 

interests in controlling internal governance and defining tribal 

membership call for a similar result. We reject this argument. 

The Cherokee Nation has no interest in protecting a 

sovereignty concern that has been taken away by the United 

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25 

States. As the district court went to great lengths to explain, 

Vann, 467 F. Supp. 2d at 66–70, the Thirteenth Amendment 

and the 1866 Treaty whittled away the tribe’s sovereignty 

with regard to slavery and left it powerless to discriminate 

against the Freedmen on the basis of their status as former 

slaves. The tribe does not just lack a “special sovereignty 

interest” in discriminatory elections — it lacks any sovereign 

interest in such behavior. 

In addition, we cannot extend Couer d’Alene beyond its 

“particular and special circumstances,” 521 U.S. at 287, 

which involved the protection of a State’s land. In this regard, 

Couer d’Alene closely aligns with earlier decisions holding 

that Ex parte Young cannot be used to gain access to the 

State’s treasury. See, e.g., Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 

663 (1974) (“[A] suit by private parties seeking to impose a 

liability which must be paid from public funds in the state 

treasury is barred by the Eleventh Amendment.”) (citing Ford 

Motor Co. v. Dep’t of Treasury, 323 U.S. 459 (1945)). 

Compared to the interests at stake in Couer d’Alene, whose 

historical pedigree is carefully set forth in that opinion, 521 

U.S. at 283–87 (citing, inter alia, Magna Carta and the 

Institutes of Justinian), the Cherokee Nation’s relatively 

newfangled interest in controlling its tribal elections strikes us 

as less compelling. We leave it for the Supreme Court to 

decide whether to add additional sovereign interests to the 

core concerns discussed in Couer d’Alene. 

IV. 

The district court determined that the Cherokee Nation 

was a required party under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 

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26 

19(a).

6

 Having concluded that the district court erred in 

holding that the Cherokee Nation was amenable to suit, we 

reverse the judgment in part. On remand, the district court 

must determine whether “in equity and good conscience” the 

suit can proceed with the Cherokee Nation’s officers but 

without the Cherokee Nation itself. See FED. R. CIV. P. 19(b). 

So ordered. 

 

6

 We do not review the district court’s Rule 19(a) determination 

because the parties have not raised the issue on appeal. 

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