Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-93-05186/USCOURTS-ca10-93-05186-0/pdf.json

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

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PUBLISH 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

SAC AND FOX NATION, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v. 

HONORABLE ORVAN J. HANSON, JR., 

Associate District Judge, Ottawa County; 

RONALD FIXICO; MERLE BOYD; JACK THORPE; 

JAMES BRANUM, 

Defendants, 

and 

BRUCE WILLINGHAN, TOM GRAY, 

Defendants-Appellants. 

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FILED 

1JIIIed States Coart ol Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

FEB 14 1995 

PATRICK FISHER 

Clerk 

No. 93-5186 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF OKLAHOMA 

(D.C. No. 92-C-645-B) 

G. William Rice, Rice, Withiam, Parmer & Bigler, Cushing, Oklahoma 

(Gregory H. Bigler, with him on the briefs) for the PlaintiffAppellee. 

Samuel C. Stone (R. Brent Blackstock, Tulsa, Oklahoma, with him on 

the briefs) of Stone Jessup, P.C., Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the 

Defendants-Appellants. 

Before TACHA, FAIRCHILD,* and LOGAN, Circuit Judges. 

TACHA, Circuit Judge. 

* The Honorable Thomas E. Fairchild, Senior Circuit Judge, 

United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, sitting by 

designation. 

Appellate Case: 93-5186 Document: 01019280500 Date Filed: 02/14/1995 Page: 1 
The Sac and Fox Nation ("the Nation"), a federally recognized 

tribe of Native Americans residing in Oklahoma, brought suit in 

district court under 28 U.S.C. § 1362. Claiming sovereign 

immunity, the Nation sought to enjoin an Oklahoma state court 

proceeding in which defendants had filed third-party suits against 

the Nation. Both parties filed motions for summary judgment, and 

the district court ruled in favor of defendants. After the Nation 

filed a motion to alter or amend the judgment under Fed. R. Civ. 

P. 59(e), the district court reversed its previous ruling·and 

entered a permanent injunction prohibiting the Oklahoma state 

court from holding proceedings involving the Nation. Defendants 

now appeal. We exercise jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 

and affirm. 

I. BACKGROUND 

The facts of this case are undisputed. The Nation created 

the Sac and Fox Industrial Development Commission ("the 

Commission") in 1983. Defendants were members of the Commission's 

five-member board of directors. When the United States Army 

awarded the Commission a large defense contract in 1989, the 

Commission established several manufacturing plants, including one 

in Commerce, Oklahoma. The Commerce plant's employees included 

persons who were not members of the Nation. In 1990, the 

Commission defaulted on the defense contract and the Nation shut 

down the Commission. 

In late 1990, a number of the Commission's former employees 

filed suit against the Commission in state court seeking back pay. 

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The state court entered a default judgment in favor of the 

employees, which the Commission appealed. These same former 

employees then filed suit against the Commission's board of 

directors, including the defendants in this case. The employees 

alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 

201-219. In turn, three of the defendants filed third-party 

actions seeking indemnification from the Commission and the Sac 

and Fox Nation. 

In the midst of the state court proceedings, the Nation filed 

this action in federal court. The Nation asked the district court 

to enjoin the state court proceedings on the ground that the 

doctrine of sovereign immunity protected it from suit. Both sides 

filed motions for summary judgment. The district court entered an 

order stating that "the Sac and Fox Nation is not entitled to 

assert sovereign immunity in the Ottawa County, State of Oklahoma 

action because the subject matter and alleged chose in action 

arises from the Nation's engaging in 'external affairs.'" In 

accordance with that ruling, the court entered judgment in favor 

of defendants Tom Gray and Bruce Willingham. 

In accordance with Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e), the Nation then 

filed a motion to alter or amend the judgment. The district court 

reversed its earlier ruling and entered judgment in favor of the 

Nation. The court reasoned that sovereign immunity must be 

explicitly waived and that the Nation had not waived its immunity 

in this case. Defendants appeal from this ruling. 

II. THE ANTI-INJUNCTION ACT 

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The first potential bar that the Nation must overcome is the 

Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2283, which reads: 

A court of the United States may not grant an injunction to 

stay proceedings in a State court except as expressly 

authorized by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of 

its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgrnents.l 

Defendants, however, did not raise the applicability of the 

Anti-Injunction Act in the district court proceedings. "As a 

general rule we refuse to consider arguments raised for the first 

time on appeal unless sovereign immunity or jurisdiction is in 

question." Daigle v. Shell Oil Co., 972 F.2d 1527, 1539 (lOth 

Cir. 1992). When the issue raised for the first time on appeal is 

neither sovereign immunity nor jurisdiction, "' [t]he failure to 

raise the issue with the trial court precludes review except for 

the most manifest error.'" Rademacher v. Colorado Ass'n of Soil 

Conservation Dist. Medical Benefit Plan, 11 F.3d 1567, 1572 (lOth 

Cir. 1993) (quoting Hicks v. Gates Rubber Co., 928 F.2d 966, 970 

(lOth Cir. 1991)) .2 

1 To repeat, the Nation brought suit under 28 U.S.C. § 1362, 

which provides that "[t]he district courts shall have original 

jurisdiction of all civil actions, brought by any Indian tribe .. . , wherein the matter in controversy arises under the 

Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States." It is 

possible that section 1362 authorizes federal courts to enter 

injunctions against state proceedings. Cf. Moe v. Confederated 

Salish & Kootenai Tribes, 425 U.S. 463, 472 (1976) (stating that 

28 U.S.C. § 1341 did not bar an injunction against the collection 

of a state tax because the Court found "an indication of a 

congressional purpose [in section 1362] to open the federal courts 

to the kind of claims that could have been brought by the United 

States as trustee"). Because we determine that defendants did not 

raise the Anti-Injunction Act previously, however, we need not 

decide that issue here. 

2 Rademacher also indicates that review of issues raised for 

the first time on appeal may be possible in "instances where 

public interest is implicated or where manifest injustice would 

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The Anti-Injunction Act is not a jurisdictional statute; 

"[i]t merely limits [the district courts'] general equity powers 

in respect to the granting of a particular form of equitable 

relief." Smith v. Apple, 264 U.S. 274, 279 (1924). Because 

defendant has not shown manifest error, we will not review the 

question here. See Airlines Reporting Corp. v. BarkY, 825 F.2d 

1220, 1225 (8th Cir. 1987) ("[Appellant] 's failure to assert the 

[Anti-Injunction] Act in the District Court bars her from 

obtaining review of this issue on appeal."). 

III. SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY 

Having determined that the issuance of an injunction in this 

case is not barred by section 2283, we turn to the merits: 

whether the Nation was entitled to sovereign immunity in the state 

court case. We review de novo the legal question of when a party 

can assert sovereign immunity. Price v. United States, 7 F.3d 

968, 969 (lOth Cir. 1993). 

"Indian tribes have long been recognized as possessing the 

common-law immunity from suit traditionally enjoyed by sovereign 

powers." Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 58 (1978) .3 

Thus, suits against Indian tribes are barred "absent a clear 

waiver by the tribe or congressional abrogation." Oklahoma Tax 

Comm. v. Citizen Band Potawatomi Indian Tribe, 498 U.S. 505, 509 

result." Rademacher, 11 F.3d at 1572 (citations omitted). 

3 Defendants ask us to abandon the principle of sovereign 

immunity for Indian tribes despite Martinez and a plethora of 

Tenth Circuit opinions. See, e.g., Ramey Constr. Co. v. Apache 

Tribe, 673 F.2d 315, 319 (lOth Cir. 1982). We decline defendants' 

invitation to ignore well-established Supreme Court and Tenth 

Circuit precedent. 

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(1991). A waiver of sovereign immunity "'cannot be implied but 

must be unequivocally expressed.'" United States v. Testan, 424 

U.S. 392, 399 (1976) (quoting United States v. King, 395 U.S. 1, 4 

(1969)). 

The district court found that the Nation did not explicitly 

waive its sovereign immunity, and defendants do not contest this 

finding. In addition, we find that a waiver of sovereign immunity 

cannot be inferred from the Nation's engagement in commercial 

activity. See American Indian Agric. Credit Consortium, Inc. v. 

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, 780 F.2d 1374, 1378-79 (8th Cir. 1985) 

(holding that a Native American tribe's sovereign immunity cannot 

be waived by implication in contract actions); see also Maynard v. 

Narragansett Indian Tribe, 984 F.2d 14, 16 (1st Cir. 1993) 

(declining to evaluate several factors to infer a tribe's waiver 

of sovereign immunity). Thus, if the Nation was entitled to 

sovereign immunity, it did not waive its immunity from suit. We 

must therefore address the predicate question of whether the 

Nation had sovereign immunity in the first instance. 

Defendants claim that the Nation is not entitled to sovereign 

immunity in this case because the commercial activity at issue 

took place outside the Nation's reservation.4 Analogizing a 

Native American tribe to a foreign sovereign, defendants claim 

4 In its order granting summary judgment, the district court 

stated that the Nation took part in "certain off-reservation 

commercial activities." It appears that the Nation disputed that 

fact at summary judgment, however. Because this fact is 

immaterial to our resolution of this case, we assume arguendo that 

the district court's finding was correct. 

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that sovereign immunity is inapplicable to a tribe's extraterritorial proprietary activity. See 28 U.S.C. § 1605(a) (2) (a 

foreign sovereign is not immune from suit when it engages in 

commercial activity in the United States). Defendants' argument 

raises an issue that some Supreme Court justices have discussed in 

various opinions but which the Court has not yet resolved. See. 

~' Potawatomi Tribe, 498 U.S. at 515 (Stevens, J., concurring) 

("I am not sure that the rule of tribal sovereign immunity extends 

to cases arising from a tribe's conduct of commercial activity 

outside its own territory."); Pueblo of Acoma v. Padilla, 490 U.S. 

1028, 1028 (denial of certiorari) (White, J., dissenting); cf. In 

re Greene, 980 F.2d 590, 598-600 (9th Cir. 1992) (Rymer, J., 

concurring), cert. denied, 114 s. Ct. 681 (1994) .5 

This Court recently decided a case presenting similar issues. 

In Bank of Oklahoma v. Muscogee (Creek) Nation, 972 F.2d 1166 

(lOth Cir. 1992), a bank brought an interpleader action against 

two parties, including a Native American tribe. The case centered 

on the proper disposition of funds related to the tribe's bingo 

5 A number of state courts have also confronted this question. 

See. e.g., Dixon v. Picopa Constr. Co., 772 P.2d 1104, 1109 (Ariz. 

1989) ("[S]ubstantial policy considerations militate in favor of 

recognizing immunity when a tribe conducts tribal business through 

a tribal economic entity."); Seminole Tribe v. Houghtaling, 589 

So.2d 1030, 1032 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1991) (holding that a tribe 

was "immune from suit despite its involvement in a commercial 

enterprise"), aff'd, 589 So.2d 1030 (Fla. 1993); Padilla v. Pueblo 

of Acoma, 754 P.2d 845, 850 (N.M. 1988) ("We know of no 

controlling law that divests the New Mexico courts of jurisdiction 

over Indian tribes for off-reservation business conduct."), cert. 

denied, 490 U.S. 1029 (1989); North Sea Products. Ltd. v. Clipper 

Seafoods Co., 595 P.2d 938, 942 (Wash. 1979) (en bane) 

(Rossellini, J., concurring) (stating that, while sovereign 

immunity is the rule for commercial activity outside Indian 

territory, "the present rule is unjust, unwise and unreasonable"). 

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enterprise. The bank first argued that commercial relations 

between Indian tribes and non-Indians would be chilled if the 

Indian tribe were entitled to assert sovereign immunity. 

Dismissing that contention, we noted that the bank's "policy 

argument precisely misses the point of sovereign immunity, which 

is the power of self-determination." Id. at 1169. Next, the bank 

attempted to analogize an Indian tribe's sovereign immunity to a 

foreign sovereign pursuing commercial activity in the United 

States. We rejected that argument as well, stating that "Indian 

tribes are not foreign sovereigns, but are 'domestic dependent 

nations.'" Id. (quoting Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 

Pet.) 1, 17 (1831).6 

Bank of Oklahoma did not address the issue of whether the 

tribe's commercial activity took place off-reservation. 

Nevertheless, we do not believe that the location of the 

commercial activity is determinative. In In re Greene, the Ninth 

Circuit concluded that "sovereign immunity, as it existed at 

common law, had an extra-territorial component." In re Greene, 

980 F.2d at 596. We accept the Ninth Circuit's reading of the 

history of sovereign immunity doctrine and conclude that the 

extra-territorial nature of these transactions does not strip the 

Nation of its right to assert sovereign immunity.? 

6 The Fifth Circuit has also determined that sovereign immunity 

applies to a Native American tribe's commercial activities. See 

MakYland Casualty Co. v. Citizens Nat'l Bank, 361 F.2d 517, 521 

(5th Cir.) ("The fact that the Seminole Tribe was engaged in an 

enterprise private or commercial in character, rather than 

governmental, is not material."), cert. denied, 385 U.S. 918 

(1966). 

7 But cf. Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones, 411 U.S. 145, 148-49 

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The analysis used in Bank of Oklahoma controls our decision 

here. While defendants in this case were free to request a waiver 

of sovereign immunity before serving on the Commission's Board of 

Directors, they did not do so. Without an explicit waiver, the 

Nation is immune from suit in state court -- even if the suit 

.results from commercial activity occurring off the Nation's 

reservation. 

IV. CONCLUSION 

Because the issue was not presented to the trial court, we 

decline to review whether the district court's issuance of the 

injunction was proper under the Anti-Injunction Act. We find no 

error in the district court's conclusion that the Nation was 

entitled to sovereign immunity in the state action. The judgment 

of the district court is therefore AFFIRMED. 

(1973) (stating that, in the context of state taxation, "Indians 

going beyond reservation boundaries have generally been held 

subject to non-discriminatory state law otherwise applicable to 

all citizens of the State"). 

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