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Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 11, 2006 Decided July 11, 2006

No. 05-5269

ELOUISE PEPION COBELL, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

v.

DIRK KEMPTHORNE, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 96cv01285)

Mark B. Stern, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,

argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs were

Peter D. Keisler, Assistant Attorney General, Kenneth L.

Wainstein, U.S. Attorney, Gregory G. Katsas, Deputy Assistant

Attorney General, and Robert E. Kopp, Thomas M. Bondy, Alisa

B. Klein, Mark R. Freeman, I. Glenn Cohen and Isaac J. Lidsky,

Attorneys.

Keith M. Harper argued the cause for appellees. With him

on the brief were Dennis M. Gingold, Elliott H. Levitas, G.

William Austin, III, and Mark I. Levy.

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Before: TATEL and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

TATEL, Circuit Judge: For the ninth time in six years we

consider an appeal in this longstanding dispute between

beneficiaries of Indian land trusts and their trustee, the United

States. In this most recent iteration, the government challenges

a district court order requiring that every mailing to trust

beneficiaries include a notice stating that “any” information

provided about trust matters “may be unreliable.” The

government also asks us to assign the case to a different district

judge. Because we agree with the government that the order

exceeded the district court’s authority, we vacate and remand for

further proceedings. And for the reasons given in this opinion,

we instruct the chief judge of the district court to reassign the

case.

I.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the United States

took title to Indian lands as trustee for individual Indians,

thereby assuming a fiduciary obligation to hundreds of

thousands of Indians. We described the history of the

government’s trust obligations, now delegated to the Secretaries

of Interior and Treasury, in Cobell v. Norton, 240 F.3d 1081,

1086-92 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (“Cobell VI”).

Ten years ago, five Indians—we shall refer to them as

“plaintiff-beneficiaries”—filed a complaint in the U.S. District

Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of themselves and

all other trust beneficiaries alleging the federal government had

breached its fiduciary obligations. Plaintiff-beneficiaries

claimed, among other things, that the government destroyed

critical records, failed to account to trust beneficiaries, and

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either lost trust assets or converted them to government use.

Plaintiff-beneficiaries requested declaratory and injunctive relief

against Interior and Treasury officials “to force the government

to abide by its duty to render an accurate accounting” of the

assets held in Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust accounts.

Cobell v. Babbitt, 91 F. Supp. 2d 1, 6-7 (D.D.C. 1999) (“Cobell

V”). After certifying the case as a class action and conducting

“a lengthy trial, the district court concluded that the federal

government and its officers have been derelict in their duties.”

Cobell VI, 240 F.3d at 1086. Accordingly, the court “ordered

them to come into compliance with their duties,” and remanded

the case to Interior and Treasury. Id. at 1094. The district court

nonetheless “retained continuing jurisdiction over the case for

the next five years” and required “quarterly status reports

summarizing the government’s progress.” Id.

In Cobell VI, although we “generally affirm[ed],” we

“order[ed] the district court to modify the characterization of

some of its findings.” Id. at 1086. We recognized that “[t]he

trusts at issue here were created over one hundred years ago

through an act of Congress, and have been mismanaged nearly

as long.” Id. Although “[t]he level of oversight proposed by the

district court may well be in excess of that countenanced in the

typical delay case,” we observed, “so too is the magnitude of

government malfeasance and potential prejudice to the

plaintiffs’ class.” Id. at 1109. We approved the district court’s

plan “to wait until a proper accounting can be performed” and

then to “assess [the government’s] compliance with [its]

fiduciary obligations.” Id. at 1110. Still, we made clear that we

“expect[ed] the district court to be mindful of the limits of its

jurisdiction” and therefore to refrain from unduly interfering

with Interior’s “conduct in preparing an accounting.” Id.

Since Cobell VI, we have resolved six more appeals, plus

two more today. These appeals address not only the core issue

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of how the accounting should be conducted, but also various

collateral matters ranging from contempt citations against senior

Interior officials to orders requiring the Department to

disconnect its computer systems from the internet. See Cobell

v. Kempthorne, No. 05-5388, ___ F.3d ___ (D.C. Cir. July 11,

2006) (computer disconnection); In re Kempthorne, No. 03-

5288, ___ F.3d ___, 2006 WL 1563612 (D.C. Cir. June 9, 2006)

(recusal of Special Master); Cobell v. Norton, 428 F.3d 1070

(D.C. Cir. 2005) (“Cobell XVII”) (accounting); Cobell v. Norton,

392 F.3d 461 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (“Cobell XIII”) (accounting);

Cobell v. Norton, 391 F.3d 251 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (“Cobell XII”)

(computer disconnection); In re Brooks, 383 F.3d 1036 (D.C.

Cir. 2004) (recusal of Special Master); Cobell v. Norton, 334

F.3d 1128 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (“Cobell VIII”) (contempt citations).

This appeal involves yet another collateral issue, which

arose when plaintiff-beneficiaries sought to require Interior to

include in every written communication with Indian trust

beneficiaries a notice stating that “[t]he Trustee-Delegates have

admitted that they do not know whether the information that

they are providing to you about your Trust assets is accurate and

complete” and that “the government is currently unable to

provide all individual Indian trust beneficiaries an accurate and

complete accounting of their trust assets and is unable to provide

a timetable for when that accounting will be rendered.” Cobell

v. Norton, 229 F.R.D. 5, 19-20 (D.D.C. 2005) (“Cobell XV”)

(quoting Pls.’ Proposed Order). According to plaintiffbeneficiaries, the district court had authority to issue such an

order either under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(d) or

pursuant to the court’s inherent equitable powers. The

government opposed the motion. On July 12, 2005, the district

court, without holding a hearing, granted the motion but altered

the proposed text. In its order—we shall refer to it as the “July

12 order”—the district court required Interior to include the

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following notice in all written communications to trust

beneficiaries:

Evidence introduced in the Cobell case shows that any

information related to the IIM Trust, IIM Trust lands,

or other IIM Trust assets that current and former IIM

Trust account holders receive from the Department of

the Interior may be unreliable. Current and former

IIM Trust account holders should keep in mind the

questionable reliability of IIM Trust information

received from the Department of the Interior if and

when they use such information to make decisions

affecting their IIM Trust assets. 

Id. at 21-22. Reasoning that even communications that on their

face bear no relation to trust accounts “might influence an Indian

beneficiary’s trust-related decisions,” the district court directed

Interior to include the notice in all written communications with

beneficiaries “without regard to subject matter.” Id. at 17. In

granting the motion, the district court relied on Rule 23,

emphasizing that the order “flow[ed] from the fact that this case

is a class action rather than from the Court’s equitable powers.”

See id. at 15 n.7.

The government now appeals, asking that we vacate the

July 12 order as unauthorized by Rule 23. On the government’s

motion, we stayed the July 12 order pending appeal. Cobell v.

Norton, No. 05-5269 (D.C. Cir. Sept. 2, 2005). Also, relying on

language in the July 12 opinion and a series of district court

rulings reversed by this court, the government moved to have

the case assigned to a different judge. We consolidated that

motion with this appeal. Cobell v. Norton, No. 05-5068 (D.C.

Cir. Sept. 15, 2005).

II.

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We begin with the July 12 Rule 23(d) order. Before

addressing the government’s challenge, however, we must

consider plaintiff-beneficiaries’ argument that we lack

jurisdiction because, according to them, the order is not

immediately appealable. The government contends that we do

have jurisdiction to review the July 12 order either because it is

an appealable injunction or pursuant to the collateral order

doctrine. See 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) (making injunctions

immediately appealable); Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan

Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546 (1949) (laying out collateral order

doctrine). Alternatively, the government urges us to treat its

appeal as a petition for a writ of mandamus. Because we agree

that the order qualifies as an injunction, we need not address the

government’s other two arguments.

Under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1), circuit courts have

jurisdiction to review “[i]nterlocutory orders . . . granting,

continuing, modifying, refusing or dissolving injunctions.”

Regardless of how the district court may choose to characterize

its order, section 1292(a)(1) applies to any order that has “the

practical effect of granting or denying an injunction,” so long as

it also “might have a serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence,

and . . . can be effectually challenged only by immediate

appeal.” I.A.M. Nat’l Pension Fund Benefit Plan A v. Cooper

Indus., Inc., 789 F.2d 21, 23-24 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (internal

quotation marks omitted). As both parties agree, to have “the

practical effect of granting or denying an injunction” an order

must be “directed to a party” and “enforceable by contempt.”

Id. at 24 (internal quotation marks omitted). Quoting from

Wright and Miller, plaintiff-beneficiaries argue that to qualify

as an injunction an order must meet a third requirement: it “must

provide ‘some or all of the substantive relief sought by a

complaint in more than temporary fashion.’” Appellees’ Br. 9

(quoting 16 Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Edward H.

Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3922 (2d ed. 1996))

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(Wright’s internal quotation marks and footnote omitted). But

plaintiff-beneficiaries omit two key words—words that, as we

shall see, control this case. The treatise, like our precedent,

actually says that the definition of “injunction” includes orders

“designed to accord or protect some or all of the substantive

relief sought by a complaint in more than temporary fashion.”

16 Wright, Miller & Cooper, supra, § 3922 (emphasis added)

(internal quotation marks and footnote omitted); I.A.M. Nat’l

Pension Fund, 789 F.2d at 24 (same language).

As noted above, it makes no difference that the district court

said the July 12 order “flow[ed] from the fact that this case is a

class action rather than from the Court’s equitable powers,”

Cobell XV, 229 F.R.D. at 15 n.7. See Lightfoot v. District of

Columbia, No. 05-7028, ___ F.3d ___, 2006 WL 1389559, at *3

(D.C. Cir. May 23, 2006) (per curiam) (“Although appellees

reiterate the district court’s contention that it did not grant an

injunction, we rather easily conclude that the district court’s . . .

order was just that.”). The only question is whether the order

has “the practical effect of granting or denying an injunction.”

Supra p. 6. Put another way, if the July 12 order looks like an

injunction and acts like an injunction, it’s an injunction—at least

for jurisdictional purposes.

To qualify as an injunction, then, an order must (1) be

“directed to a party”; (2) be “enforceable by contempt”; (3) be

“designed to accord or protect” substantive relief; and

(4) threaten “a serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence” and

be challengeable “only by immediate appeal.” I.A.M. Nat’l

Pension Fund, 789 F.2d at 24 (internal quotation marks

omitted). The parties agree that the July 12 order satisfies the

first two requirements: it is directed to a party—the Interior

Secretary—and is enforceable by contempt. The parties have

very different views as to whether the order satisfies the third

requirement: that it accord or protect substantive relief.

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Plaintiff-beneficiaries see the order as merely procedural,

characterizing it as a “class-action case-management order

designed to provide a fair proceeding that preserves the

opportunity for effective judicial relief in the future.”

Appellees’ Br. 10. According to the government, “[t]he order

does not govern the conduct of the litigation; it is a substantive

order that aims to affect the primary conduct of the class.”

Appellants’ Br. 46.

We agree with the government. Unlike a case-management

order, which would merely advance the litigation procedurally,

the July 12 order seeks to protect substantive rights during the

pendency of the litigation. The district court expressly meant

for the order to help class members make intelligent decisions

about trust assets, not to facilitate their participation in the

litigation: “The court-ordered accounting is designed to promote

class members’ rights to make fully informed choices about

their trust assets. If there are no more informed decisions to be

made, or if all the trust assets are gone, then the court-ordered

accounting will be useless to the Indians.” Cobell XV, 229

F.R.D. at 16. Plaintiff-beneficiaries themselves describe the

July 12 order as “serv[ing] to protect pendente lite PlaintiffBeneficiaries’ interest in the trust accounts that are the subject

of the litigation and thus to ensure that the ultimate relief is not

nugatory or ineffective as to at least some of the members of the

class.” Appellees’ Br. 10 n.10. Protecting beneficiary rights

represents classic injunctive relief. See Dist. 50, United Mine

Workers of Am. v. Int’l Union, United Mine Workers of Am., 412

F.2d 165, 168 (D.C. Cir. 1969) (“The usual role of a preliminary

injunction is to preserve the status quo pending the outcome of

litigation.”).

We also agree with the government that the July 12 order

satisfies the final requirement, as it threatens “a serious, perhaps

irreparable, consequence” and “can be effectually challenged

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only by immediate appeal.” I.A.M. Nat’l Pension Fund, 789

F.2d at 24 (internal quotation marks omitted). The order

requires a cabinet agency to confess its own unreliability not just

in mailings relating to trust accounts, but in every mailing on

any subject. See Cobell XV, 229 F.R.D. at 17 (requiring notice

in all mailings “without regard to subject matter”). This strikes

us as both serious and, if unjustified, not correctable at the end

of the litigation.

Having confirmed our jurisdiction, we next consider

plaintiff-beneficiaries’ argument that the government has

forfeited its challenge to the district court’s authority to issue the

July 12 order by failing to raise the argument in the district

court. See Flynn v. Comm’r, 269 F.3d 1064, 1068-69 (D.C. Cir.

2001) (“Generally, an argument not made in the lower tribunal

is deemed forfeited and will not be entertained absent

exceptional circumstances.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

According to plaintiff-beneficiaries, “the district court

determined” that “‘Interior has previously conceded and does

not now dispute’ the court’s authority to enter the July 12 order

pursuant to Rule 23(d).” Appellees’ Br. 15 (quoting Cobell XV,

229 F.R.D. at 13). The district court determined no such thing.

The court actually said: “Interior has previously conceded and

does not now dispute this Court’s authority to restrict Interior’s

communications with Indian beneficiaries pursuant to Rule

23(d).” Cobell XV, 229 F.R.D. at 13. The difference is critical.

Although, as the district court pointed out, the government never

challenged the court’s authority to issue communications-related

orders in general, the government nowhere conceded that the

district court had authority to enter the July 12 order. Far from

it. The government expressly objected to the contents of the

order: “any notice,” the government argued, “should only inform

class members of the existence of this litigation, of their

potential class membership, and of their right to consult with

class counsel.” Defs.’ Opp’n to Pls.’ Mot. 7 (internal quotation

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marks omitted). Because the government has preserved its

challenge to the July 12 order, we turn to the merits.

III.

Although the July 12 order has the effect of an injunction,

the district court relied on authority drawn from Rule 23(d), not

on its equitable authority. See supra p. 5. In particular, the

court cited Rule 23(d)(3), which authorizes district courts to

issue orders “imposing conditions on the representative parties

or on intervenors.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(d)(3); see Cobell XV, 229

F.R.D. at 13 (relying on this language). But nothing in Rule

23(d)(3) supports the July 12 order. That order imposed a

condition not on a representative party or an intervenor, but on

the defendant. Hardly a technicality, the limitation to

representative parties and intervenors stems from Rule

23(d)(3)’s purpose: ensuring proper representation of class

interests. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 advisory committee’s note

(1966 amendment) (“Subdivision (d)(3) reflects the possibility

of conditioning the maintenance of a class action, e.g., on the

strengthening of the representation, and recognizes that the

imposition of conditions on intervenors may be required for the

proper and efficient conduct of the action.” (citation omitted)).

The July 12 order had an entirely different purpose—to help

protect trust beneficiaries from making poor decisions based on

faulty information unrelated to the litigation itself. 

Instead of defending the district court’s flawed reliance on

Rule 23(d)(3), plaintiff-beneficiaries argue that the district court

had authority to issue the July 12 order under Rule 23(d)(2),

which, although the district court nowhere cited it, authorizes

orders

requiring, for the protection of the members of the

class or otherwise for the fair conduct of the action,

that notice be given in such manner as the court may

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direct to some or all of the members of any step in the

action, or of the proposed extent of the judgment, or of

the opportunity of members to signify whether they

consider the representation fair and adequate, to

intervene and present claims or defenses, or otherwise

to come into the action.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(d)(2). According to plaintiff-beneficiaries,

the July 12 order fits within the rule’s authorization of notice

“for the protection of the members of the class or otherwise for

the fair conduct of the action.” Appellees’ Br. 17 (quoting Fed.

R. Civ. P. 23(d)(2)) (appellees’ emphasis). Not until later in

their brief, however, do plaintiff-beneficiaries quote Rule

23(d)(2)’s second half, which makes clear that the rule

contemplates not substantive relief of the kind the court granted

here, see supra p. 8, but only notice of procedural matters—such

as “any step in the action, . . . the proposed extent of the

judgment,” and “the opportunity of members to signify whether

they consider the representation fair and adequate, to intervene

and present claims or defenses, or otherwise to come into the

action,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(d)(2). Rule 23’s advisory committee

notes, though describing the rule’s list of permissible subjects

for notice as “non-exhaustive,” nowhere suggest that the rule

authorizes substantive, as opposed to procedural, notice. Fed. R.

Civ. P. 23 advisory committee’s note (1966 amendment); see

also Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(d)(5) (authorizing orders “dealing with

similar procedural matters”).

None of the four cases plaintiff-beneficiaries cite supports

the proposition that Rule 23(d)(2) authorizes substantive relief.

Indeed, each case, even including one in which a Rule 23(d)

order was reversed, concerns communications relating to the

litigation’s procedural posture, not its underlying merits. In In

re School Asbestos Litigation, 842 F.2d 671, 676 (3d Cir. 1988),

upon which plaintiff-beneficiaries rely most heavily, the Third

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Circuit affirmed a notice that “identifie[d] the member

companies of the SBA, note[d] that those member companies

‘principally fund’ the SBA, state[d] that those companies [were]

defendants in the underlying class action and that all public and

private, elementary and secondary schools [were] plaintiffs in

the litigation,” and provided “the names, addresses and

telephone numbers of lead counsel for the plaintiff class”—all

procedural information. So too in Great Rivers Cooperative of

Southeastern Iowa v. Farmland Industries, Inc., 59 F.3d 764,

765 (8th Cir. 1995), where the Eighth Circuit reversed an order

requiring defendants to print in a newsletter a rebuttal to an

article that “as a whole appear[ed] to constitute an implied

solicitation to potential class members to opt out of this

litigation if and when a class is certified and notice given” and

“to refrain from communicating anything in the future that could

reasonably be taken as an invitation to opt out.” Likewise, in

Barahona-Gomez v. Reno, 167 F.3d 1228, 1236 (9th Cir. 1999),

the Ninth Circuit affirmed an order requiring “the government

to provide notice of the pending action and the injunction” the

district court had issued, and in In re Synthroid Marketing

Litigation, 197 F.R.D. 607, 610 (N.D. Ill. 2000), the district

court ordered notice “sent to the class members . . . providing

them with correct information about what they need to do if they

wish to either participate in, object to or opt out of the proposed

settlement.” Four cases, four procedural notices.

As these cases demonstrate, Rule 23(d)(2) authorizes notice

to protect class members’ right to participate in the litigation; it

does not authorize substantive orders protecting the very rights

class members seek to vindicate. To keep class members

informed of this litigation, the district court here could have

simply ordered notice of the pendency of the litigation, the

rulings it had already issued, and beneficiaries’ right to contact

class counsel—exactly the type of order the government

recommended, see Defs.’ Opp’n to Pls.’ Mot. 7; supra p. 9.

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But the district court went much further. Rather than

merely informing class members of the litigation’s progress or

of facts already established, the district court required Interior to

attest to facts it disputed. To make matters worse, the notice’s

broad indictment of Interior’s reliability, accentuated by the

emphasis on the word “any,” extends well beyond trust account

information: “any information related to the IIM Trust, IIM

Trust lands, or other IIM Trust assets that current and former

IIM Trust account holders receive from the Department of the

Interior may be unreliable.” Cobell XV, 229 F.R.D. at 21-22.

To be sure, we have no doubt Interior’s trust account

information has serious reliability problems. See, e.g., Cobell

VI, 240 F.3d at 1089 (“Not only does the Interior Department

not know the proper number of accounts, it does not know the

proper balances for each IIM account, nor does Interior have

sufficient records to determine the value of IIM accounts.”). But

nothing in the record reveals any problems with other

information such as land appraisals. The district court thought

that Interior’s “more complicated calculations, such as land

appraisals” could not “be trusted” given deficiencies in the trust

accounts, Cobell XV, 229 F.R.D. at 16, but it pointed to nothing

in the record indicating that trust account problems might infect

Interior’s calculations in other areas.

Exacerbating the notice’s overbreadth is its wide

distribution. Noting that trust information could affect all

decisions by trust beneficiaries, the district court ordered Interior

to send the notice with every written communication. Id. at 17

n.10. The notice’s inclusion in mailings unrelated to trust

accounts (such as those regarding health care or education),

especially given the notice’s sweeping language, suggests that

any Interior mailing “may be unreliable”—a conclusion both

unsupported by the record and likely quite harmful to the

Department and its programs. Because the July 12 order seeks

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to protect substantive rights and inflicts substantive harm on

Interior, it falls outside Rule 23(d)(2)’s scope.

IV.

This brings us to the government’s motion to assign the

case to a different judge. In support, the government cites two

types of evidence: language from the opinion accompanying the

July 12 order and “[r]epeated reversals” of district court rulings.

Appellants’ Br. 55.

The July 12 Opinion

Because the government relies so heavily on the district

court’s language, and because it is important to read that

language in context, we quote at length. The opinion’s

“Background” section begins:

At times, it seems that the parties, particularly

Interior, lose sight of what this case is really about.

The case is nearly a decade old, the docket sheet

contains over 3000 entries, and the issues are such that

the parties are engaged in perpetual, heated litigation

on several fronts simultaneously. But when one strips

away the convoluted statutes, the technical legal

complexities, the elaborate collateral proceedings, and

the layers upon layers of interrelated orders and

opinions from this Court and the Court of Appeals,

what remains is the raw, shocking, humiliating truth at

the bottom: After all these years, our government still

treats Native American Indians as if they were

somehow less than deserving of the respect that should

be afforded to everyone in a society where all people

are supposed to be equal.

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For those harboring hope that the stories of

murder, dispossession, forced marches, assimilationist

policy programs, and other incidents of cultural

genocide against the Indians are merely the echoes of

a horrible, bigoted government-past that has been

sanitized by the good deeds of more recent history, this

case serves as an appalling reminder of the evils that

result when large numbers of the politically powerless

are placed at the mercy of institutions engendered and

controlled by a politically powerful few. It reminds us

that even today our great democratic enterprise remains

unfinished. And it reminds us, finally, that the terrible

power of government, and the frailty of the restraints

on the exercise of that power, are never fully revealed

until government turns against the people.

The Indians who brought this case are

beneficiaries of a land trust created and maintained by

the government. The Departments of the Interior and

Treasury, as the government’s Trustee-Delegates, were

entrusted more than a century ago with both

stewardship of the lands placed in trust and

management and distribution of the revenue generated

from those lands for the benefit of the Indians. Of

course, it is unlikely that those who concocted the idea

of this trust had the Indians’ best interests at

heart—after all, the original General Allotment Act

that created the trust was passed in 1887, at a time

when the government was engaged in an “effort to

eradicate Indian culture” that was fueled, in part, “by

a greed for the land holdings of the tribes[.]” Cobell v.

Babbitt (“Cobell V”), 91 F. Supp. 2d 1, 7-8 (D.D.C.

1999). But regardless of the motivations of the

originators of the trust, one would expect, or at least

hope, that the modern Interior department and its

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modern administrators would manage it in a way that

reflects our modern understandings of how the

government should treat people. Alas, our “modern”

Interior department has time and again demonstrated

that it is a dinosaur—the morally and culturally

oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and

imperialist government that should have been buried a

century ago, the last pathetic outpost of the

indifference and anglocentrism we thought we had left

behind.

Cobell XV, 229 F.R.D. at 7 (alteration in original). The district

court next outlined the “Factual History,” first asserting that

“Interior’s management of the Indian trust has been a nightmare

from the beginning,” id., and then briefly chronicling Interior’s

trust management failings, which have been well-documented

both in this litigation and elsewhere, id. at 8; Misplaced Trust:

The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Mismanagement of the Indian

Trust Fund, H.R. Rep. No. 102-449 (1992). Finding that “[t]he

ignominious record speaks for itself,” Cobell XV, 229 F.R.D. at

8, the court recited many of its previous findings of

mismanagement. “The problems that result from Interior’s

inability to maintain complete and accurate records of the IIM

trust,” the court continued, “are compounded and made more

intractable by the penchant of Interior’s employees, officials,

and litigation counsel to be less than forthcoming with the

Court.” Id. at 9. In support of this statement, the court noted

that it had on several occasions cited officials for contempt or

referred government attorneys to the Committee on Grievances.

Id.

“Add vindictiveness to dishonesty and managerial

ineptitude,” the court went on, giving as the primary example of

“vindictiveness” Interior’s alleged violation of the court’s order

forbidding retaliation against Interior officials who cooperated

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17

with plaintiff-beneficiaries. Id. at 9-10. According to the

district court, Interior violated that order by taking “severe

adverse employment actions” against an Interior official, Mona

Infield, who had provided an affidavit to assist plaintiffbeneficiaries. See id. at 10. Although “the matter was later

settled to the Court’s satisfaction,” the court found it

“illustrative enough of the depths to which Interior has sunk that

the Court found it necessary to issue a general anti-retaliation

order in the first place; but Interior’s subsequent willful

retaliation against its own employee in the face of such an order

betrays a truly Machiavellian guile.” Id.

“As if the Infield business was not enough,” the court

continued, “Interior’s wrath was turned on the Indian

beneficiaries themselves in the wake of the Court’s September

29, 2004 order restricting communications between Interior and

class members concerning sales of Indian trust land (the

‘land-sales order’).” Id. “‘[B]etween October 1, 2004 and

October 8, 2004,’” the court explained, “‘a number of individual

Indian trust beneficiaries were denied either their trust checks or

information regarding their trust checks by BIA employees who

cited this Court’s [land-sales] Order as justification,’” even

though “the Court had previously made clear at a hearing held

on October 1, 2004, that the land-sales order had no effect

whatsoever on Interior’s ability to distribute trust checks.” Id.

(quoting Cobell v. Norton, 355 F. Supp. 2d 531, 542 (D.D.C.

2005)) (alteration in original). “Apparently,” according to the

court, “Interior’s withholding of trust checks or information

about trust checks from the Indians was one outward

manifestation of a period of Byzantine maneuvering within the

department in an attempt to either evade or, failing that,

mischaracterize and vilify this Court and the land-sales order.”

Id. at 11. “In light of the record in this case,” the court found it

“more likely that the Secretary’s actions constituted willful

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18

misconduct” than that she was “grossly negligent.” Id. (internal

quotation marks omitted).

The court’s “Factual History” concludes:

But these are only examples. The entire record in

this case tells the dreary story of Interior’s degenerate

tenure as Trustee-Delegate for the Indian trust—a story

shot through with bureaucratic blunders, flubs, goofs

and foul-ups, and peppered with scandals, deception,

dirty tricks and outright villainy—the end of which is

nowhere in sight. Despite the breadth and clarity of

this record, Interior continues to litigate and relitigate,

in excruciating fashion, every minor, technical legal

issue. This is yet another factor forestalling the final

resolution of the issues in this case and delaying the

relief the Indians so desperately need. It is against this

background of mismanagement, falsification, spite, and

obstinate litigiousness that this Court is to evaluate the

general reliability of the information Interior

distributes to IIM account holders.

Id. (citation omitted).

After recounting the “Procedural History,” the court began

its “Discussion,” see id. at 11-12, dropping the following

footnote:

Interior’s tongue-in-cheek summary of its responses to

the plaintiffs’ motion—“The Proposed Notice is the

wrong notice at the wrong time to the wrong group of

recipients paid for, and sent out by, the wrong party[,]”

Defs.’ Opp. at 2—typifies the level of respect that

Interior generally accords both the Indian beneficiaries

and this Court. The puerile reference is not lost on the

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Court, but Interior’s misguided attempt at levity in the

context of litigating an issue of immense importance to

500,000 members of a historically oppressed people is

disgraceful. Unfortunately, it is also unsurprising from

a defendant that this Court has charged with “setting

the gold standard for arrogance in litigation strategy

and tactics.” [Cobell v. Norton, 357 F. Supp. 2d 298,

307 (D.D.C. 2005).] This Court has played host to

countless pleadings from clinically insane litigants and

prison inmates but has rarely seen such a disrespectful

tenor in a court filing.

Id. at 13 n.5 (first alteration in original).

Turning to the merits, the district court stated:

Interior does not dispute the factual predicates of

the plaintiffs’ argument. Interior concedes that all

trust-related information Interior communicates to

Indian beneficiaries is inherently unreliable. Of

course, anything other than a concession of this point

would be laughable in light of the record in this case.

The factual record, composed of the accumulated

detritus of nine years spent examining Interior’s odious

performance as Trustee-Delegate for the Indian trust,

is certainly clear enough and smattered with a

sufficient number of specific abuses to satisfy the . . .

standard for relief under Rule 23(d). If Interior cannot

even ascertain the number of existing IIM account

holders, how can any of its more complicated

calculations, such as land appraisals, be trusted? If

Interior is willing to deceive this Court, why would

anyone think that Interior would hesitate to lie to the

Indians?

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15 This hypothesis may be the most plausible, as there

is some evidence to substantiate it. In June, 2002,

Interior filed with the Court a report generated by

Interior’s Office of Inspector General (“OIG”)

following an investigation of “seven specific issues

relating to allegations that senior managers and

attorneys of the Department of the Interior . . .

engaged in misconduct.” See Notice [1355] of Filing

the Office of Inspector General’s Report: Allegations

Concerning Conduct of Department of the Interior

Employees Involved in Various Aspects of the Cobell

Litigation (“OIG Rep.”), June 25, 2002, exec. summ.

at 1. This investigation was conducted during the

pendency of the 2002 contempt trial mentioned

above. In the course of investigating Interior, the

Id. at 16. After resolving several matters not at issue here, the

court concluded:

While it is undeniable that Interior has failed as a

Trustee-Delegate, it is nevertheless difficult to conjure

plausible hypotheses to explain Interior’s default.

Perhaps Interior’s past and present leaders have been

evil people, deriving their pleasure from inflicting

harm on society’s most vulnerable. Interior may be

consistently populated with apathetic people who just

cannot muster the necessary energy or emotion to

avoid complicity in the Department’s grossly negligent

administration of the Indian trust. Or maybe Interior’s

officials are cowardly people who dodge their

responsibilities out of a childish fear of the magnitude

of effort involved in reforming a degenerate system.

Perhaps Interior as an institution is so badly broken

that even the most well-intentioned initiatives are

polluted and warped by the processes of

implementation.15 The government as a whole may be

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OIG “uncovered bad judgment, unfocused

management, a myriad of definitional issues, and

extreme hostility among the players and entities[,]”

and “found factions with extremely myopic views of

and approaches to the very complex issues at hand.”

OIG Rep., exec. summ. at 2. The OIG noted that in

its decades of oversight of Interior, “we have often

observed . . . a Department whose components are

blinded by clouded judgment and crippled by

distrust[,]” id. at 6, characterized by a “bunker

mentality” in which Interior employees generally

“begin by protecting [their] own Bureau or office, to

the detriment of other Bureaus or offices if necessary;

then protect the Department, and/or the institution or

position it has advanced; [and] finally, protect the

public interests . . . .” Id. The OIG found that while

Interior’s various entities and employees are “fueled

by a multitude of motivations, many of which were

well-intentioned[,]” id. at 2, one of the least prevalent

motivations “was to protect and advance the interests

of Individual Indian Trust account holders.” Id.

inherently incapable of serving as an adequate

fiduciary because of some structural flaw. Perhaps the

Indians were doomed the moment the first European

set foot on American soil. Who can say? It may be

that the opacity of the cause renders the Indian trust

problem insoluble.

On numerous occasions over the last nine years,

the Court has wanted to simply wash its hands of

Interior and its iniquities once and for all. The

plaintiffs have invited the Court to declare that Interior

has repudiated the Indian trust, appoint a receiver to

liquidate the trust assets, and finally relieve the Indians

of the heavy yoke of government stewardship. The

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Court may eventually do all these things—but not yet.

Giving up on rehabilitating Interior would signal more

than the downfall of a single administrative agency. It

would constitute an announcement that negligence and

incompetence in government are beyond judicial

remedy, that bureaucratic recalcitrance has outpaced

and rendered obsolete our vaunted system of checks

and balances, and that people are simply at the mercy

of governmental whim with no chance for salvation.

The Court clings to a slim and quickly receding hope

that future progress may vitiate the need for such a

grim declaration.

This hope is sustained in part by the fact that the

Indians who brought this case found it in themselves to

stand up, draw a line in the sand, and tell the

government: Enough is enough—this far and no

further. Perhaps they regret having done so now, nine

years later, beset on all sides by the costs of protracted

litigation and the possibility that their efforts may

ultimately prove futile; but still they continue. The

notice requirement established by the Court today

represents a significant victory for the plaintiffs. For

the first time in the history of this case, the majority of

Indian beneficiaries will be aware of the lawsuit, the

plaintiffs’ efforts, and the danger involved in placing

any further confidence in the Department of the

Interior. Perhaps more importantly, the Indians will be

advised that they may contact class counsel for

guidance on their trust-related concerns. This likely

will bring to light a wealth of new evidence concerning

Interior’s mismanagement of the trust; it will also open

an avenue to relief for individuals throughout Indian

country whose suffering might otherwise be buried

forever in a bureaucratic tomb.

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Real justice for these Indians may still lie in the

distant future; it may never come at all. This reality

makes a statement about our society and our form of

government that we should be unwilling to let stand.

But perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that

people never forget what the plaintiffs have done here,

and that other marginalized people will learn about this

case and follow the Indians’ example.

Id. at 22-23 & n.15 (omissions and alterations in original).

Reversals

Since Cobell VI, this court has heard eight appeals in this

case, each time setting aside a district court order or other action

against Interior. According to the government, this pattern

provides further evidence of the need to assign the case to a

different judge.

In the first of these eight opinions, Cobell VIII, we reversed

contempt citations against the Secretary and Assistant Secretary

of Interior, finding the district court’s reasoning on one point

“mystifying.” Cobell VIII, 334 F.3d at 1149. We also issued a

writ of mandamus directing the removal of a “Special MasterMonitor” whom the district court had appointed over the

government’s objection. Id. at 1135-36, 1142. Among other

things, we found the district court had given the Monitor “an

investigative, quasi-inquisitorial, quasi-prosecutorial role that is

unknown to our adversarial legal system.” Id. at 1142.

In the second opinion, In re Brooks, we issued another writ

of mandamus, this time directing the district court to disregard

reports from a Special Master who “had been performing

investigative and adjudicative tasks that entailed ex parte

communications with witnesses and third parties.” In re Brooks,

383 F.3d at 1044. We found “the nature and extent of [the

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Special Master’s] ex parte contacts would lead an informed

observer reasonably to question his impartiality.” Id. at 1046.

The district court’s action, we explained, was as if “a judge

presiding over a criminal proceeding” had “dispatch[ed] his law

clerk to visit the scene of the crime, take fingerprints, interview

witnesses, and report back to the judge about his findings.” Id.

In Cobell XII, we vacated an order requiring “disconnection

of substantially all of the Department of the Interior’s computer

systems from the Internet.” Cobell XII, 391 F.3d at 253. We

found the district court had impermissibly “shift[ed] the burden

of persuasion to the Secretary to show why disconnecting most

of Interior’s IT systems was unnecessary,” id. at 259, and

“abused its discretion by not holding an evidentiary hearing

before issuing the . . . injunction,” id. at 262.

In Cobell XIII, we largely vacated a “historical accounting”

injunction requiring Interior to create a plan for fulfulling its

fiduciary obligations and “identify any portions of the plan that

might be deemed inconsistent with the common law trust duties

previously identified by the district court, and explain why the

identified portion or portions should not be considered

inconsistent with these duties.” Cobell XIII, 392 F.3d at 469.

We explained that “the court’s innovation of requiring

defendants to file a plan and then to say what ‘might’ be wrong

with it turns the litigation process on its head,” id. at 474, and

that “the court may not micromanage court-ordered reform

efforts undertaken to comply with general trust duties

enumerated by the court, and then subject defendants to findings

of contempt for failure to implement such reforms,” id. at 478.

In Cobell XVII, we set aside another historical accounting

injunction, noting that “[e]ven the plaintiffs agree[d] that the

injunction should not stand because they believe[d] it to be

impossible to perform.” Cobell XVII, 428 F.3d at 1072. The

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district court had “completely disregarded relevant information

about the costs of its injunction,” id. at 1077, and, in rejecting

the government’s plan to use statistical sampling,

“acknowledged the extra burden in time and money but saw that

singular burden as outweighed simply by the beneficiaries’

preferences.” Id. at 1078.

In In re Kempthorne, we issued yet another writ of

mandamus, this time ordering the district court to strike several

Special Master reports from the record. Charged with

investigating a contractor’s allegation that, among other things,

Interior had withheld critical information from the court, the

Special Master hired an employee of that very

contractor—indeed, an employee who would “likely be a

witness in [the contractor’s] case against the Department.” In re

Kempthorne, 2006 WL 1563612, at *5. We thought it “difficult

to imagine a more biased way of conducting and reporting upon

an investigation.” Id.

Today, we set aside two more orders against Interior. In

No. 05-5388, we again vacate an order requiring disconnection

of virtually all Interior computers from the internet, finding that

“the district court glossed over the immensity of the disruption

that would occur to Interior’s operations.” Cobell v.

Kempthorne, No. 05-5388, slip op. at 28. And in this appeal, we

set aside an order requiring Interior to confess its own

unreliability in every mailing to trust beneficiaries on any

subject. As we explained above, the district court again

undervalued the potential harm to Interior, and then exacerbated

that harm by requiring notice more sweeping than the record can

support. See supra p. 13.

V.

We have authority to assign a case to a different district

judge under “our general supervisory power to ‘require such

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26

further proceedings to be had as may be just under the

circumstances.’” United States v. Microsoft Corp., 56 F.3d

1448, 1463 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (per curiam) (Microsoft I) (quoting

28 U.S.C. § 2106). Because unfavorable rulings are “[a]lmost

invariably . . . proper grounds for appeal, not for recusal,” we

exercise this authority only in extraordinary cases. Liteky v.

United States, 510 U.S. 540, 555 (1994).

Reassignment requests usually arise from accusations that

a judge engaged in improper outside communications. See, e.g.,

Microsoft I, 56 F.3d at 1463-65 (instructing district court to

reassign case where judge relied on a book that was not in

evidence); United States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34, 46

(D.C. Cir. 2001) (en banc; per curiam) (ordering reassignment

where trial judge “engaged in impermissible ex parte contacts

by holding secret interviews with members of the media and

made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft officials

in public statements outside of the courtroom”). Indeed, earlier

in this litigation, the government sought to remove the judge on

that basis, claiming that he had received information gathered by

Special Masters outside the adversarial process. In re Brooks,

383 F.3d at 1041. Accepting the judge’s statement that “he did

not receive ex parte communications substantively related to

[pending contempt] proceedings,” we denied the government’s

request. Id. at 1038.

Today, the government advances a different argument.

Alleging no improper outside communications, the government

instead claims the July 12 opinion’s language, together with this

court’s repeated reversals of the district court’s decisions,

warrants reassignment. “No reasonable observer,” the

government argues, “would believe that a court that has

viciously and baselessly denounced a cabinet department and its

leadership as villainous racists could properly oversee its

activities and adjudicate further claims.” Appellants’ Br. 53.

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To prevail, the government has a heavy burden. As the

Supreme Court observed in Liteky v. United States, although

“[t]he judge who presides at a trial may, upon completion of the

evidence, be exceedingly ill disposed towards the defendant,

who has been shown to be a thoroughly reprehensible person,”

still “the judge is not thereby recusable for bias or prejudice,

since his knowledge and the opinion it produced were properly

and necessarily acquired in the course of the proceedings, and

are indeed sometimes (as in a bench trial) necessary to

completion of the judge’s task.” Liteky, 510 U.S. at 550-51.

Removal for bias is appropriate “even though [the judge’s

opinion] springs from the facts adduced or the events occurring

at trial” only when “it is so extreme as to display clear inability

to render fair judgment.” Id. at 551. 

Applying Liteky is a delicate task. First and foremost, we

must take special care to avoid undermining the ability of

district judges to perform their responsibilities. Particularly in

hard-fought litigation dealing with controversial issues, district

judges must sometimes take strong actions and use strong

words. Presiding over such challenging cases would become

even more difficult if district judges had to worry that appellate

courts would routinely review their decisions not just for legal

error, but for bias as well. See United States v. Roach, 108 F.3d

1477, 1484 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (“In a controversial, sharply

contested case presided over by an experienced district judge,

strongly stated judicial views rooted in the record should not be

confused with judicial bias.”), vacated in part on other grounds,

136 F.3d 794 (D.C. Cir. 1998). For this reason, and because

except in the most unusual circumstances we trust judges to put

their personal feelings aside, recusal must be limited to truly

extraordinary cases where, as Liteky puts it, the judge’s views

have become “so extreme as to display clear inability to render

fair judgment,” Liteky, 510 U.S. at 551.

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In the rare case that meets the Liteky standard, however,

removal is essential to “preserve[] both the appearance and

reality of fairness, ‘generating the feeling, so important to a

popular government, that justice has been done.’” Marshall v.

Jerrico, Inc., 446 U.S. 238, 242 (1980) (quoting Joint

Anti-Fascist Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 172 (1951)

(Frankfurter, J., concurring)). The appearance of partiality cuts

at the heart of the judicial system. See Bridges v. California,

314 U.S. 252, 282 (1941) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (“The

administration of justice by an impartial judiciary has been basic

to our conception of freedom ever since Magna Carta.”). Just as

reassignment is necessary if reasonable observers could believe

that improper outside contacts influenced a judicial decision, see

Microsoft I, 56 F.3d at 1463, so too is reassignment necessary if

reasonable observers could believe that a judicial decision

flowed from the judge’s animus toward a party rather than from

the judge’s application of law to fact.

With these principles in mind, we turn to the case before us,

beginning with the language of the July 12 opinion. The

government believes that “the court’s moral condemnation has

caused it to depart from judicial norms” and that the court has an

“unshakeable view that Interior is guilty of global malfeasance,

and that the court’s duty is to ferret out the evidence of its

misdeeds.” Appellants’ Br. 55. Plaintiff-beneficiaries have a

very different view of the July 12 opinion. They insist that

“[w]hile forcefully worded, the district court’s rulings are

founded entirely on the evidence of record set forth in more than

nine years of litigation and over 200 days of evidentiary

hearings.” Appellees’ Br. 31.

Although the July 12 opinion contains harsh—even

incendiary—language, much of that language represents nothing

more than the views of an experienced judge who, having

presided over this exceptionally contentious case for almost a

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29

decade, has become “exceedingly ill disposed towards [a]

defendant” that has flagrantly and repeatedly breached its

fiduciary obligations. Liteky, 510 U.S. at 550. We ourselves

have referred to Interior’s “malfeasance,” “recalcitrance,”

“unconscionable delay,” “intransigen[ce],” and “hopelessly

inept management.” Cobell VI, 240 F.3d at 1096, 1109; Cobell

XII, 391 F.3d at 257; Cobell XIII, 392 F.3d at 463.

Yet portions of the July 12 opinion go further. Most

seriously, although no one, not even the government, doubts that

racism ran rampant at Interior a century ago, see Appellants’

Reply Br. 19 (acknowledging that “a government expert witness

. . . agreed . . . that Commissioner of Indian Affairs Sells, who

held office in the early part of the last century, believed that

white people were superior to Indians”), the July 12 opinion

extends beyond historical racism and all but accuses current

Interior officials of racism. “[O]ur ‘modern’ Interior

department,” the opinion declares, is “a dinosaur—the morally

and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist

and imperialist government that should have been buried a

century ago, the last pathetic outpost of the indifference and

anglocentrism we thought we had left behind.” Cobell XV, 229

F.R.D. at 7. Other statements reinforce the district court’s

apparent belief that racism at Interior is not just a thing of the

past: “our government still treats Native American Indians as if

they were somehow less than deserving of the respect that

should be afforded to everyone in a society where all people are

supposed to be equal.” Id. The opinion also dismisses the

possibility that “the stories of murder, dispossession, forced

marches, assimilationist policy programs, and other incidents of

cultural genocide against the Indians are merely the echoes of a

horrible, bigoted government-past that has been sanitized by the

good deeds of more recent history.” Id.

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To be sure, Interior’s deplorable record deserves

condemnation in the strongest terms. Words like “ignominious”

and “incompeten[t]” (the district court’s) and “malfeasance” and

“recalcitrance” (ours) are fair and well-supported by the record.

Even drawing inferences of racism might well have been

appropriate were Interior’s motives relevant, as they would be

in a discrimination case, for such inferences would be

“necessary to completion of the judge’s task,” Liteky, 510 U.S.

at 551. Here, however, Interior’s motive had nothing to do with

the issue pending in the district court—whether inaccuracies in

trust information require notice to Indian beneficiaries. Indeed,

the district court made clear that it viewed the facts relevant to

that inquiry as uncontested. See Cobell XV, 229 F.R.D. at 16

(“Interior does not dispute the factual predicates of the

plaintiffs’ argument.”).

Other passages in the July 12 opinion are also troubling.

The opinion describes Interior as an agency whose “spite” has

led it to turn its “wrath” on trust beneficiaries and engage in

“willful misconduct,” “iniquities,” “scandals,” “dirty tricks,” and

“outright villainy.” Id. at 10, 11, 22. Words like these,

especially given the limited issue the July 12 order resolves,

suggest the district court has condemned not just Interior’s

particular failures as trustee, but the Department as an

institution.

We have little doubt that this parade of serious charges, all

unconnected to the issue before the district court, could

contribute to a reasonable observer’s belief that Interior stands

no chance of prevailing whatever the merits of its position. But

we need not decide whether such charges, standing alone,

require reassignment, for the charges do not stand alone.

Rather, they follow an unbroken string of reversed district court

orders, all directed against Interior. As we have held,

“[a]lthough a legal ruling may not itself serve as the basis for a

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31

motion to disqualify, a particular judicial ruling can be evidence

of . . . bias or prejudice.” United States v. Barry, 938 F.2d 1327,

1340 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (citations and internal quotation marks

omitted).

Here, there is not just one “particular judicial ruling,” but

eight. In two, the district court imposed an inappropriate

evidentiary burden on Interior (Cobell XII and XIII). In three, it

underestimated the harmful effects its orders would have on the

government (Cobell XVII and the two cases decided today).

And in three others, it both assumed the mantle of a prosecutor

and authorized biased investigations (Cobell VIII, In re Brooks,

and In re Kempthorne). In four cases, we found abuses of

discretion (Cobell XII, XIII, XVII, and No. 05-5388), in three

(the mandamus actions) we found Interior had a clear and

indisputable right to relief (Cobell VIII, In re Brooks, and In re

Kempthorne), and in one we found the district court had used a

procedural rule to accomplish a substantive goal (this case). We

set aside contempt citations against the Secretary and other

senior Interior officials (Cobell VIII), and twice found that the

district court awarded injunctive relief without the required

evidentiary hearing (Cobell XII and XVII). Ten judges of this

court have heard one or more of these appeals. Not one has

dissented.

Plaintiff-beneficiaries insist the record is not as one-sided

as the foregoing summary suggests. In a footnote, they assert

that “[n]otably, the district court has ruled against plaintiffs or

limited their relief sought.” Appellees’ Br. 41 n.39. “Notably,”

however, they provide no citation to any such action. Asked at

oral argument for examples of significant relief the district court

had denied plaintiff-beneficiaries, counsel first cited the court’s

rejection of their request for a trial date on the adequacy of

Interior’s accounting for the named plaintiffs. But the district

court denied that motion without prejudice because it

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32

“conclude[d] that the pendency of appellate review of the issues

surrounding the defendants’ accounting duties at issue in this

litigation render[ed] it inappropriate to set a date for trial on

those issues at [that] time,” Cobell v. Norton, No. 96-1285

(D.D.C. June 3, 2005)—hardly a crushing blow. Counsel also

cited the district court’s 1998 denial of plaintiff-beneficiaries’

request for interim relief. Given plaintiff-beneficiaries’

sweeping victory in the subsequent bench trial, however, we

hesitate to ascribe much significance to that decision. Finally,

counsel observed that the district court has repeatedly refused to

place the trust assets into receivership. But as the July 12

opinion makes clear, those refusals stem not from any sympathy

for Interior, but rather from the district court’s concern that

placing assets in receivership “would constitute an

announcement that negligence and incompetence in government

are beyond judicial remedy.” Cobell XV, 229 F.R.D. at 22.

Plaintiff-beneficiaries’ challenge to the uniformity of this

court’s reversals fares no better. Their only example of a break

in the constant stream of reversals is our dismissal with

prejudice of a government appeal. They neglect to mention,

however, that the order they cite did not affirm on the merits, but

instead responded to the government’s motion for voluntary

dismissal. See Cobell v. Norton, No. 03-5063, 2003 WL

22136383 (D.C. Cir. Sept. 9, 2003).

In short, in case after case the district court granted

extensive relief against Interior, and in case after case we

reversed, even under highly deferential standards of review. To

be sure, repeated reversals, without more, are unlikely to justify

reassignment. But here there is more. For one thing, on several

occasions the district court or its appointees exceeded the role of

impartial arbiter by issuing orders without hearings and by

actively participating in evidence-gathering. For another, the

July 12 opinion levels serious charges against Interior and its

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33

officials, charges that not only bear no relationship to the issue

pending before the court, but also go beyond criticizing Interior

for its serious failures as trustee and condemn the Department as

an institution.

From all of this evidence, “an objective observer is left with

the overall impression,” Microsoft I, 56 F.3d at 1463, that the

district court’s professed hostility to Interior has become “so

extreme as to display clear inability to render fair judgment,”

Liteky, 510 U.S. at 551. What distinguishes this case from one

in which a judge has merely become “exceedingly ill disposed

towards [a party which] has been shown to be . . . thoroughly

reprehensible,” id. at 550-51, is, most certainly, not any

redeeming aspect of Interior’s behavior as trustee. Rather, what

distinguishes this case is the combination of the content of the

July 12 opinion and the nature of the district court’s actions.

Given these seemingly unique circumstances, and given that

“justice must satisfy the appearance of justice,” Offutt v. United

States, 348 U.S. 11, 14 (1954)—that is, reasonable observers

must have confidence that judicial decisions flow from the

impartial application of law to fact, not from a judge’s animosity

toward a party—we conclude, reluctantly, that this is one of

those rare cases in which reassignment is necessary.

VI.

We close with a warning to the parties. In Cobell VI, we

recognized that “the federal government has failed time and

again to discharge its fiduciary duties,” resulting in a serious

injustice that has persisted for over a century and that cries out

for redress. Cobell VI, 240 F.3d at 1086. Yet today, five years

later, no remedy is in sight, this case continues to consume vast

amounts of judicial resources, and growing hostility between the

parties distracts from the serious issues in the case.

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Our ruling today presents an opportunity for a fresh start.

As the litigation proceeds, the government must remember that

although it regularly prevails on appeal, our many decisions in

no way change the fact that it remains in breach of its trust

responsibilities. In its capacity as trustee and as representative

of all Americans, the government has an obligation to rise above

its deplorable record and help fashion an effective remedy. For

their part, counsel for plaintiff-beneficiaries, as counsel to a

large class of Indians and as officers of the court, would more

ably advance their worthy cause by focusing their energies on

legal issues rather than on attacking the government and its

lawyers.

The July 12 order is vacated and the matter remanded to the

chief judge of the district court with instructions to reassign the

case. We expect both parties to work with the new judge to

resolve this case expeditiously and fairly.

So ordered.

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