Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caed-1_02-cv-05891/USCOURTS-caed-1_02-cv-05891-10/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 25:640 Indian Tribal Rights

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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 

ROSELIND QUAIR & CHAROLOTTE 

BERNA, 

 Petitioners, 

v. 

MIKE SISCO, ELMER THOMAS, KEVIN 

THOMAS, DENA BAGA, ELAINE JEFF, 

PATRICIAL DAVIS,and DOES 1 

through 50, inclusive, 

 Respondents. 

No. 1:02-CV-5891 DFL 

Memorandum of Opinion

and Order

This case arises from the decisions by the General Council 

of the Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi Indian Tribe (“the Tribe”) to 

banish and disenroll petitioners Roselind Quair and Charlotte 

Berna (“petitioners”). Petitioners contend that the banishment 

and disenrollment decisions violate the Indian Civil Rights Act 

(“ICRA”) because petitioners were denied various procedural 

protections available in federal and state courts. The Tribal 

Business Committee members of the Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi 

Indian Tribe (“respondents”) take the position that ICRA does 

not override tribal sovereignty, which includes the right of the 

Tribe to follow its own traditional adjudicatory procedures in 

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banishment and disenrollment proceedings. Both petitioners and 

respondents now move for summary judgment. For the reasons 

below, the court DENIES petitioners’ motion and GRANTS 

respondents’ motion on petitioners’ claims relating to 

disenrollment only. 

I. 

On October 2, 2000 the General Council of the Tribe 

banished and disenrolled Quair and Berna after they hired an 

attorney to sue the Tribe.1 Quair’s dispute arose out of her 

allegation that a male tribal member sexually harassed her. 

Berna’s dispute had a more complex history. Berna had been the 

Treasurer of the Tribe and in that capacity had initiated 

disenrollment and banishment proceedings as against other 

members of the Tribe. After Berna was removed from her position 

as Treasurer, allegedly because of misuse of funds, she hired an 

attorney to regain her office. Both Quair and Berna, acting 

independently, hired the same attorney, a known opponent of the 

Tribe, who then made a shrill demand on the Tribe on behalf of 

both clients. The Tribe alleges that by hiring an attorney to 

sue the Tribe, Berna and Quair threatened tribal sovereignty and 

welfare. 

In 2004, both parties moved for summary judgment. On July 

26, 2004, Judge Robert E. Coyle, to whom this case was 

originally assigned, granted in part and denied in part both 

 

1 The General Council consists of all adult members of the 

Tribe. 

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motions.2 Judge Coyle held that the court had habeas corpus 

jurisdiction under ICRA to review the Tribe’s decision to banish 

Quair and Berna because: (1) banishment is criminal in nature; 

(2) banishment constitutes detention; and (3) petitioners had 

exhausted all available administrative remedies. Reviewing the 

merits of the case, Judge Coyle found disputes of material fact 

as to petitioners’ due process and fair trial claims.3 Quair, 

359 F.Supp. 2d at 967, 971-72. 

Following Judge Coyle’s order, on September 3, 2004, 

respondents notified petitioners by certified mail that the 

General Council would hold a rehearing to reconsider the Tribe’s 

earlier order of banishment and disenrollment. The letter 

advised petitioners that at this hearing petitioners would have 

the right to legal counsel and the right to present witnesses. 

The letter also indicated that respondent Elmer Thomas would 

testify and that petitioners would have the opportunity to 

cross-examine him. Petitioners refused to attend, contending 

that the rehearing still would violate ICRA because: “[the 

hearing] was in front of the same decision making body—the 

 

2 Judge Coyle’s opinion sets out in depth most of the 

material facts relating to the case. See Quair v. Sisco, 359 

F.Supp. 2d 948, 953-62 (E.D. Cal. 2004). Since that opinion, 

and in response to it, the General Council held a rehearing on 

October 1, 2004 to decide again whether to banish and disenroll 

petitioners. The facts relating to that rehearing are set forth 

below. 

3 Judge Coyle found that it was disputed whether: (1) 

petitioners received notice of the charge against them; (2) 

petitioners had notice that the General Council was considering 

banishment and disenrollment; and (3) petitioners had the right 

to confront hostile witnesses at the hearing. Quair, 359 

F.Supp. 2d at 977-78. 

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General Council; the Tribe still lacked a formal judicial body 

and any formal procedures; and the October 1, 2004 General 

Council Meeting was a usurpation of the Federal Court’s 

authority to determine what constituted sufficient process under 

the ICRA.” (Pet’r. SUF 45.) 

Despite the petitioners’ absence, the General Council held 

the rehearing on October 1, 2004. Some of the participants at 

this hearing had attended and voted in the previous hearing. As 

before, the hearing did not follow any codified adjudicatory 

procedures. Moreover, the “customary” law that petitioners 

purportedly violated—the law against disturbing the stability 

and welfare of the Tribe—had not been reduced to writing in any 

code, statute book or similar document. 

The General Council voted on four issues: (1) whether 

petitioner Berna should be banished; (2) whether petitioner 

Quair should be banished; (3) whether petitioner Berna should be 

disenrolled; and (4) whether petitioner Quair should be 

disenrolled.4 After deciding to banish and disenroll both Berna 

and Quair, the General Council memorialized its decision in four 

resolutions, which the Bureau of Indian Affairs (“BIA”) 

subsequently approved.5 

 

4 While Berna had not lived on the reservation since 1970, 

Quair lived on the reservation until she left one year after the 

Tribe decided to banish her. The Tribe had not taken any 

further steps to evict her.

5 Resolution 2004-92 concludes: “NOW THEREFORE BE IT 

RESOLVED, based upon the foregoing decision of the General 

Council, Charlotte Berna is disenrolled from the Santa Rosa 

Rancheria Indian Community Tachi Tribe.” 

Resolution 2004-93 concludes: “NOW THEREFORE BE IT 

RESOLVED, based upon the foregoing decision of the General 

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II. 

A. Respondents’ Motion 

1. Disenrollment 

Respondents seek to distinguish banishment from 

disenrollment, arguing that the latter is not subject to federal 

habeas corpus review.6

ICRA guarantees to individual tribe members certain rights 

that are similar but not identical to those in the Bill of 

Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. 25 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1303; 

 

Council, Roselind Quair is disenrolled from the Santa Rosa 

Rancheria Indian Community Tachi Tribe.” 

Resolution 2004-94 concludes: ““NOW THEREFORE BE IT 

RESOLVED, based upon the foregoing decision of the General 

Council, Charlotte Berna is banished from the Santa Rosa 

Rancheria Indian Community Tachi Tribe.” 

Resolution 2004-95 concludes: “NOW THEREFORE BE IT 

RESOLVED, based upon the foregoing decision of the General 

Council, Roselind Quair is disenrolled from the Santa Rosa 

Rancheria Indian Community Tachi Tribe.” 

6 Judge Coyle found that “disenrollment from tribal 

membership and subsequent banishment from the reservation 

constitute detention.” Quair, 359 F.Supp. 2d at 971. But Judge 

Coyle’s ruling does not govern the disenrollment of petitioners 

at the 2004 rehearing. Whether the court has habeas corpus 

jurisdiction to review the banishment and not the disenrollment 

of petitioners was not before Judge Coyle. In 2000, as opposed 

to after the rehearing in 2004, the General Council passed only 

one resolution sanctioning petitioners. That resolution ordered 

that petitioners be “immediately and permanently excluded” from 

the reservation and did not distinguish banishment from 

disenrollment. Because the disenrollment and banishment of 

petitioners were inseparable before the rehearing, Judge Coyle 

had no reason to consider whether the court had habeas corpus 

jurisdiction to review disenrollment separate from banishment. 

Moreover, “[a] failure of subject matter jurisdiction is 

crucial and the lack of it may be raised at any time during the 

life of a lawsuit by either party or by the trial or appellate 

court on its own motion.” 4 Charles Alan Wright & Arthur 

Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1063 (2007).

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Poodry v. Tonawanda Band of Seneca Indians, 85 F.3d 874, 881-82 

(2d Cir. 1996). In passing ICRA, Congress sought to achieve a 

delicate balance between protecting the rights of individual 

members and respecting tribal sovereignty. Santa Clara Pueblo 

v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 62 (1978). Therefore, Congress left 

enforcement of ICRA mostly to tribal courts. ICRA allows 

federal judicial review only by a petition of habeas corpus 

under § 1303 and otherwise does not permit private federal 

causes of action.7 Id. at 70. Petitioners seeking relief under 

§ 1303 must establish that: (1) the proceeding at issue is 

criminal and not civil in nature; (2) the Tribe is detaining 

them; and (3) they have exhausted all available tribal remedies. 

Quair, 359 F.Supp. 2d. at 963. This statutory framework tightly 

limits federal court review of tribal decisionmaking. In 

interpreting § 1303, courts should hesitate to so expand the 

meaning of “criminal” and “detention” such that, as a practical 

matter, all tribal decisions affecting individual members in 

important areas of their lives become subject to review in 

federal court. Such a result would be inconsistent with the 

principle of broad, unreviewable tribal sovereignty in all but 

criminal cases involving physical detention. 

Tribal membership determinations are not exempt from habeas 

corpus review under § 1303 when the above three requirements are 

met. See Poodry, 85 F.3d at 901 (concluding that petitioners 

could challenge the tribe’s decision to banish them and strip 

 

7 Section 1303 provides: “The privilege of the writ of 

habeas corpus shall be available to any persons, in a court of 

the United States, to test the legality of his detention by 

order of an Indian tribe.” 25 U.S.C. § 1303 (2006). 

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them of their membership in federal court after finding that § 

1303’s requirements were met). But courts long have recognized 

that the right to define its membership is central to a tribe’s 

“existence as an independent political community.” Santa Clara 

Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 72 n.32. Therefore, “the [federal] 

judiciary should not rush to create causes of action that would 

intrude on these delicate matters.” Id. Because the Tribe’s 

disenrollment of Quair and Berna directly addresses tribal 

membership, the court must exercise great caution in deciding 

whether § 1303 applies to these decisions by the Tribe. 

Although the question is not free from doubt, the court 

finds that it lacks jurisdiction under § 1303 to review the 

Tribe’s decision to disenroll petitioners from membership in the 

Tribe in the circumstances of this case. The Tribe’s 2004 

decisions to disenroll petitioners and to banish them were two 

distinct, independent sanctions. The General Council 

procedurally banished and disenrolled petitioners in separate 

actions at the rehearing, taking four separate votes and 

memorializing them in four separate resolutions. According to 

the Tribe’s submission, it may banish without disenrolling and 

it may disenroll without banishing; the actions are not 

synonymous. It follows that the court may review the Tribe’s 

disenrollment of Quair and Berna under § 1303 only if the 

disenrollments, considered separately from banishment, meet § 

1303’s three requirements. 

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Here, the disenrollment of petitioners does not qualify as 

detention under § 1303.8 For the purposes of habeas corpus, a 

person is in detention or custody when severe restraints are 

imposed upon the person’s liberty. Hensley v. Municipal Court, 

411 U.S. 345, 351 (1973). Over the years, courts have expanded 

the scope of the term “custody” to cover “circumstances [that] 

fall outside conventional notions of physical custody.” Edmunds 

v. Won Bae Chang, 509 F.2d 39, 40 (9th Cir. 1975); see also

Hensley, 411 U.S. at 351 (extending habeas corpus relief to 

petitioner who was released on his own recognizance because the 

state could restrict his freedom at any time); Jones v. 

Cunningham, 371 U.S. 236, 242-43 (1963) (finding parolee 

entitled to habeas corpus relief because his liberty of movement 

was subject to various restraints imposed by the parole board). 

But no court has applied habeas corpus review in cases where the 

purported restraint does not limit the petitioner’s geographic 

movement. For example, a person cannot invoke habeas corpus 

relief to challenge a fine. Moore v. Nelson, 270 F.3d 789, 791 

(9th Cir. 2001) (finding that a petitioner cannot challenge an 

$18,000 fine levied by a tribe in federal court under § 1303); 

Edmunds, 509 F.2d at 41 (finding that petitioner could not 

invoke habeas corpus relief solely on the basis of a $25 fine). 

And while some courts have found that the denial of United 

States citizenship is subject to federal habeas corpus review, 

 

8 In contrast to other federal habeas statutes, such as 28 

U.S.C. § 2254(a), § 1303 requires that petitioners be in 

“detention” instead of in “custody.” But courts have found that 

§ 1303 is no broader than analogous federal habeas statutes. 

See Poodry, 85 F.3d at 890. 

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the petitioners in those cases faced deportation upon losing 

their citizenship. See, e.g., Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 

276, 284 (1922); Espino v. Wixon, 136 F.2d 96, 98 (9th Cir. 

1943). Accordingly, the court may review the disenrollment of 

petitioners under § 1303 only if it similarly affects their 

geographic movement. 

Whereas courts have held that banishment, including a 

stripping of tribal membership, constitutes detention, Poodry, 

85 F.3d at 895-96, no court has held that disenrollment 

independently constitutes detention. And here, petitioners have 

failed to show that disenrollment, separate from banishment, 

restricts their physical freedom in any way.9 While banishment 

requires a person – whether a member of the Tribe or not - to 

leave the reservation, disenrollment strips a member of tribal 

membership and the tangible tribal benefits that attend upon 

membership. 41 Am. Jur. 2d Indians; Native Americans § 17 

(2006) (“Indian tribes have membership rolls for a variety of 

reasons, most notably for the distribution of assets and 

judgment funds in circumstances involving the distribution of 

tribal funds and other property under the supervision and 

control of the federal government.”) In this case, all the 

benefits are financial, such as monthly per capita payments that 

 

9 Petitioners also fail to rebut the Tribe’s contention 

that, in the past, members have been disenrolled without 

banishment and banished without disenrollment. As the 

proponents of jurisdiction, petitioners bear the burden on this 

issue. 

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come from the Tribe’s gaming revenue.10 According to 

respondents, nonmembers may live on the reservation, a point 

that petitioners do not dispute. 

Although they bear the burden on jurisdiction, petitioners 

failed to address respondents’ contention that disenrollment is 

distinct from banishment in their written opposition. At oral 

argument, petitioners contended that disenrollment was “worse” 

than banishment because it stripped them of valuable benefits 

and of their tribal identity. This misses the mark because the 

jurisdictional issue is whether the tribal action amounts to 

“detention,” not whether it affects some other important 

interest. Section 1303 grants federal courts jurisdiction to 

review the “legality of [petitioner’s] detention” and not 

penalties that, while harsh, do not constitute detention. 

Therefore, the court finds that § 1303 is simply inapplicable to 

the disenrollment of petitioners.11

 

10 Other membership benefits include: LEAP payments, Elder 

benefits, health insurance, payment of burial expenses, semiannual bonuses, educational support, post-high school 

scholarship programs, housing allotments, health care at the 

Tribal health center, and hiring preferences for tribal members 

for tribal employment. 

11 Closer to the mark is petitioners’ contention, advanced 

at oral argument, that disenrolled individuals face a threat of 

eviction amounting to an infringement on physical freedom. Some 

courts have found that a person is in custody or detained when 

facing a threat of physical restraint, including deportation or 

eviction. But in those cases, the threat was imminent: the 

government had the authority to place the person immediately in 

jail without further decisionmaking. See Hensley, 411 U.S. at 

351; Jones, 371 U.S. at 242. In contrast, petitioners here have 

made no showing that the General Council can remove nonmembers 

without taking another vote and making a new decision to remove 

the nonmember. 

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Petitioners have the burden of establishing the court’s 

jurisdiction. Because petitioners have failed to show that 

disenrollment affects their physical freedom to a degree that it 

may be considered tantamount to detention, the court GRANTS 

respondents’ motion for summary judgment as to petitioners’ 

claims relating to disenrollment. 

2. Banishment 

While banishment constitutes detention, Quair, 359 F.Supp. 

2d at 971, respondents argue in their motion that § 1303 is 

inapplicable to petitioners’ banishment claims because the 

October 2004 rehearing mooted the entire case. 

In the 2004 ruling, Judge Coyle refused to grant 

petitioners summary judgment on their claims alleging a denial 

of due process and denial of a fair trial because he found 

disputes of material fact as to: (1) whether petitioners 

received notice of the charge against them; (2) whether 

petitioners had notice that the General Council was considering 

banishment and disenrollment; and (3) whether petitioners had 

the right to confront hostile witnesses at the hearing. Quair, 

359 F.Supp. 2d at 977-78. Because respondents offered 

petitioners these protections at the 2004 rehearing, they claim 

that this action is now moot. 

Respondents are only partially correct. In his opinion, 

Judge Coyle did not find that petitioners were entitled to only 

these protections. Rather, Judge Coyle concluded that disputes 

of material fact as to these protections were enough for 

petitioners’ claims to survive summary judgment. Judge Coyle 

 

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did not decide or address whether ICRA, and in particular the 

rights to due process and a fair trial under ICRA, guaranteed 

petitioners additional protections. Therefore, the rehearing 

mooted only disputes as to whether petitioners received notice 

and had the right to confront hostile witnesses, not the entire 

suit.12 

B. Petitioners’ Motion 

Petitioners allege that respondents violated ICRA per se 

and that no balancing of the Tribe’s and the individual member’s 

interests is appropriate. Petitioners contend that the Ninth 

Circuit has overruled its decision in Randall v. Yakima Nation 

Tribal Court, 841 F.2d 897, 900 (9th Cir. 1988), and, therefore, 

that the balancing of interests analysis no longer applies. 

However, because the court finds that Randall has not been 

overruled, and because petitioners provide little analysis of 

the balance of interests, petitioners’ motion will be denied.13

Under Randall and the cases following it, courts consider 

the tribal interest “in maintaining the traditional values of 

their unique government and cultural identity” when interpreting 

ICRA. Janis v. Wilson, 385 F.Supp. 1143, 1150 (D.S.D. 1974). 

 

12 Respondents also make the argument that the court lacks 

“the ability to create a judicial tribunal or to impose upon the 

Tribe rules and procedures which mirror the principals of 

American jurisprudence for the purpose of resolving intra-tribal 

disputes related to membership.” Because it has yet to 

determine whether respondents violated ICRA, the court declines 

to speculate as to the remedies it may order. 

13 In view of the court’s conclusion that it lacks 

jurisdiction to review the disenrollment of petitioners, the 

court addresses petitioners’ motion for summary judgment only as 

to the claims relating to banishment. 

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While § 1302 incorporates certain amendments from the Bill of 

Rights, “the meaning and application of 25 U.S.C. § 1302 to 

Indian tribes must necessarily be somewhat different than the 

established Anglo-American legal meaning and application of the 

Bill of Rights on federal and state governments.” Id. “Where 

the tribal court procedures under scrutiny differ significantly 

from those ‘commonly employed in Anglo-Saxon society,’ courts 

weigh ‘the individual right to fair treatment’ against ‘the 

magnitude of the tribal interest [in employing those 

procedures]’ to determine whether the procedures pass muster 

under the Act.” Randall v. Yakima Nation Tribal Court, 841 F.2d 

897, 900 (9th Cir. 1988) (citations omitted). But courts need 

not conduct this balancing test when “the tribal procedures 

parallel those found in ‘Anglo-Saxon society.’” Id.

Here, the court must weigh petitioners’ interests against 

the interests of the Tribe to determine the scope of 

petitioners’ rights under ICRA. The Tribe’s adjudicatory 

process is quite different from that followed in the common law, 

Anglo-American tradition. For example, the tribal adjudicatory 

body, the General Council, consisting of the entire membership 

of the Tribe, has combined executive, legislative, and judicial 

functions. 

Petitioners make no argument based upon the Randall

balancing test. Rather, petitioners argue that respondents 

violated ICRA per se because: (1) “the Tribe has absolutely no 

written standards or procedures governing disenrollment or 

banishment”; (2) the Tribe “fail[ed] to provide ‘fair warning’ 

of proscribed criminal conduct”; and (3) “the General Council is 

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not a fair and impartial tribunal.” In making these per se 

arguments, petitioners make no showing that their individual 

interests in these procedural safeguards surpass any 

countervailing tribal interests.14

The premise of petitioners’ per se contentions is that 

Randall is no longer good law in the Ninth Circuit. According 

to petitioners, the Ninth Circuit overruled Randall in Means v. 

Navajo Nation, 432 F.3d 924, 935 (9th Cir. 2005), and found a 

balancing of interests unnecessary because the protections in 

ICRA are identical to those found in the United States 

Constitution. Petitioners are incorrect. One panel of the 

Ninth Circuit lacks authority to overrule another panel. 

Moreover, in Means, the court likely concluded that a balancing 

of interests was unnecessary because of the particular 

circumstances in that case, most notably the critically 

important factor that, unlike the Tribe here, the tribe involved 

in the Means case, the Navajo Nation, uses an adjudicatory 

system resembling that of the Anglo-American tradition. For 

example, the Navajo Nation guarantees criminal defendants the 

right to a jury trial and the right to counsel. Navajo Nation 

Code tit. 1. Therefore, rather than overruling Randall, the 

Means court, followed Randall, foregoing the balancing test 

 

14 Cases cited by petitioners do not support finding per se 

violations. Petitioners cite many cases that interpret the 

United States Constitution but not as applied to Indian tribes 

under ICRA. They also cite to cases from other circuits in 

which the courts were not bound by Randall, as the court is 

here. Moreover, the tribes in the latter cases may use an 

adjudicatory process similar to that in the Anglo-American 

tradition, and, therefore, even under Randall, a balancing of 

interests would have been unnecessary. 

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because of the nature of the Navajo Nation’s adjudicatory 

system.15 Such an approach is not appropriate here as applied to 

a tribe with different traditions and customary procedures. 

Moreover, petitioners allege that the resolutions banishing 

them are bills of attainder, and, therefore, violate ICRA. A 

bill of attainder is “a law that legislatively determines guilt 

and inflicts punishment upon an identifiable individual without 

provision of the protections of a judicial trial.” Nixon v. 

Adm’r of Gen. Servs., 433 U.S. 425, 468 (1977). While the 

General Council has executive, legislative, and judicial 

functions, petitioners argue that the General Council was acting 

as a legislative body when it banished them because it denied 

them all the protections of a judicial trial. But petitioners 

refer to protections common to Anglo-American judicial systems 

and which ICRA may not require of Indian tribes that follow a 

different model of adjudication. And here, the court has yet to 

decide what protections ICRA guarantees petitioners under 

Randall. By contending that the General Council is acting in 

its legislative capacity only because it failed to provide these 

 

15 Petitioners seize on the following statement in Means as 

overruling Randall: “the Indian Civil Rights Act confers all the 

criminal protections on Means that he would receive under the 

Federal Constitution, except for the right to grand jury 

indictment and the right to appointed counsel if he cannot 

afford an attorney.” However, the court made this statement 

without any indication that it meant to limit Randall or 

fundamentally reinterpret Randall. Surely, if the Means court 

intended such a reinterpretation, it would have said so. See

USA Recycling, Inc. v. Town of Babylon, 66 F.3d 1272, 1294 (2d 

Cir. 1995) (noting the principle that, when courts intend to 

overrule clear precedent, they should do so in plain and 

explicit terms). 

 

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protections, petitioners simply recycle their due process 

arguments that they are per se entitled to these protections.16 

III. 

For the reasons above, the court DENIES petitioners’ motion 

and GRANTS respondent’s motion on petitioners’ claims relating 

to their disenrollment. 

 

IT IS SO ORDERED. 

Dated: May 18, 2007 

 /s/ David F. Levi___________

 DAVID F. LEVI 

United States District Judge

 

16 Petitioners also argue that banishment violates ICRA 

because it is cruel and unusual. Judge Coyle, however, found in 

his 2004 order that the banishment of petitioners was not cruel 

and unusual and already granted respondents partial summary 

judgment on this claim. Quair, 359 F.Supp. 2d at 978-79.

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