Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-12-05217/USCOURTS-caDC-12-05217-0/pdf.json

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 March 13, 2014 Decided September 2, 2014 

No. 12-5217 

MENOMINEE INDIAN TRIBE OF WISCONSIN, 

APPELLANT

v. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:07-cv-00812) 

Geoffrey D. Strommer argued the cause for appellant. 

With him on the briefs was Marsha K. Schmidt. F. Michael 

Willis entered an appearance. 

Donald E. Kinner, Assistant Director, U.S. Department 

of Justice, argued the cause for appellees. With him on the 

brief was Stuart F. Delery, Assistant Attorney General. 

Jeanne E. Davidson, Attorney, entered an appearance. 

Before: GARLAND, Chief Judge, and TATEL and PILLARD, 

Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge PILLARD. 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 1 of 19
2 

PILLARD, Circuit Judge: Federal law requires that a claim 

for breach of a self determination contract between an Indian 

Tribe and a federal agency be filed with a contracting officer 

at the agency within six years of the claim’s accrual. The 

Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin filed claims in 2005 

against the Department of Health and Human Services for 

unpaid contract support costs that accrued from 1996 through 

1998—more than six years earlier. This case requires us to 

determine whether, pursuant to the doctrine of equitable 

tolling, the Tribe may sue even though the statute of 

limitations has lapsed. Equitable tolling is only available to a 

party who can show, inter alia, that “‘some extraordinary 

circumstance stood in his way’ and prevented timely filing.” 

Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631, 649 (2010) (quoting Pace 

v. DiGuglielmo, 544 U.S. 408, 418 (2005)). The Menominee 

Tribe identifies two circumstances that it suggests are 

“extraordinary” under Holland. First, the Tribe contends that 

it did not file timely claims because it believed that, as a 

member of a federal class action filed by another tribe, it was 

entitled to a different form of tolling—class-action tolling—

that it believed afforded it two additional years beyond the 

statutory limitations period. Second, the Menominee Tribe 

contends that adverse legal precedent (which has since been 

reversed) led it to believe during the limitations period that its 

claims had no hope of success, so the Tribe refrained from the 

apparently futile act of filing them. We conclude that the 

legal misunderstandings and tactical mistakes the Tribe has 

identified here, however, do not amount to “extraordinary 

circumstance[s]” justifying equitable tolling. The Menominee 

Tribe’s claims are thus barred by the statute of limitations. 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 2 of 19
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I. 

Between 1995 and 2004, the Menominee Indian Tribe of 

Wisconsin (“the Menominee Tribe” or “the Tribe”) provided 

healthcare services to its members pursuant to a self 

determination contract with the Secretary of Health and 

Human Services (HHS). Menominee Indian Tribe of Wis. v. 

United States (Menominee I), 539 F. Supp. 2d 152, 153 

(D.D.C. 2008). The Indian Self Determination and Education 

Assistance Act, 25 U.S.C. § 450 et seq. (2012) (“ISDA” or the 

“Act”), authorizes such contracts to encourage tribal 

participation in, and management of, programs that would 

otherwise be administered on Indian Tribes’ behalf by the 

Department of the Interior and HHS. See id. §§ 450a, 450f. 

The Act requires the Secretary of the Interior and the 

Secretary of HHS to turn over direct operation of certain 

federal Indian programs to any Indian tribe that wishes to run 

those programs itself. See id. § 450f(a); see also 

id. § 450a(b). A “self determination contract” is the vehicle 

for transferring those programs. Id. § 450b(j). 

Pursuant to a self determination contract, the government 

agrees to pay a participating tribe what it would have cost the 

federal agency to provide the services had the agency 

implemented the program itself. See id. § 450j-1(a)(1). Since 

1988, the Act has also required that tribal contractors be 

reimbursed for “contract support costs”—additional 

reasonable overhead and other specified indirect costs that 

tribes incur. Id. § 450j-1(a)(2), (3); see generally ISDA 

Amendments of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-472, § 201, 102 Stat. 

2285 (“1988 Amendments”); S. Rep. No. 100-274, at 8-13 

(1987). Tribes and the government negotiate the services and 

the attendant contract support costs through annual funding 

agreements, which become part of their self determination 

contracts. See 25 U.S.C. § 450l(c). 

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Parallel but mutually exclusive paths for resolving 

disputes relating to self determination contracts are set forth 

in overlapping provisions of the Contract Disputes Act 

(CDA), 41 U.S.C. §§ 7101-7109,1 and the ISDA, 

25 U.S.C. § 450m-1(a), (d). Pursuant to the CDA, a 

contractor, such as an Indian tribe seeking underpaid contract 

support costs, must make a claim in writing to a contracting 

officer at the relevant agency before it may sue in court. See 

41 U.S.C. § 7103(a). The demand need not be detailed, and 

may consist of a short written statement outlining the basis of 

the claim, estimating damages, and requesting a final 

decision. See M. Maropakis Carpentry, Inc. v. United States, 

609 F.3d 1323, 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2010); see also Arctic Slope 

Native Ass’n v. Sebelius (Arctic Slope I), 583 F.3d 785, 797 

(Fed. Cir. 2009) (“[S]ubmissions to the contracting officer 

need not be elaborate.”). If the contracting officer denies the 

claim, the tribe may then follow one of two paths: (1) under 

the CDA, the tribe may appeal administratively within the 

agency or directly to the Court of Federal Claims, and then to 

the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 

41 U.S.C. § 7104(a), (b)(1); or (2) under the ISDA, file a 

claim in any federal district court with jurisdiction over the 

relevant agency, 25 U.S.C. § 450m-1(a). See Menominee 

Indian Tribe of Wisconsin v. United States (Menominee II), 

614 F.3d 519, 521-22 (D.C. Cir. 2010).2

 Since 1994, the 

 

1

 The CDA was codified at 41 U.S.C. §§ 601-13 during the years at 

issue in this case. The CDA has since been recodified and 

renumbered. See 41 U.S.C. §§ 7101-09. In this opinion, we will 

cite to the current codification. 

2

 Both paths require that a party submit a claim to a contracting 

officer at the relevant agency before taking further steps. See 

41 U.S.C. § 7103(a); 25 U.S.C. § 450m-1(d) (incorporating the 

CDA’s procedural requirements into the ISDA). 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 4 of 19
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CDA has also required that all claims related to government 

contracts be submitted to a contracting officer within six years 

of the accrual of the claim. Arctic Slope Native Ass’n, Ltd. v. 

Sebelius (Arctic Slope II), 699 F.3d 1289, 1295 (Fed. Cir. 

2012); Menominee II, 614 F.3d at 521. 

The ISDA requires self determination contracts to contain 

what has proven to be a contentious proviso: that full payment 

of contract support costs is “subject to the availability of 

appropriations.” 25 U.S.C. § 450j-1(b); see also Salazar v. 

Ramah Navajo Chapter, 132 S. Ct. 2181, 2187 (2012). Tribes 

and federal agencies have disputed the meaning of that phrase 

for more than 20 years. Throughout the 1990s, the 

Departments of Interior and HHS, the two principal agencies 

that enter self determination contracts with Tribes that include 

contract support costs, read that phrase as authorizing them to 

pay less than the full amount of a tribe’s contract support 

costs even when Congress had appropriated enough 

unrestricted funds to the agencies to fully cover those costs. 

See Salazar, 132 S. Ct. at 2187-89; U.S. Gov’t Accountability 

Office, GAO/RCED-99-150, Indian Self-Determination Act: 

Shortfalls in Indian Contract Support Costs Need to Be 

Addressed 3-4, 32-33 (1999). As a result of pervasive 

reimbursement shortfalls, tribes cut ISDA services to tribal 

members, diverted resources from non-ISDA programs, and 

even forwent certain contract opportunities, hindering their 

progress toward self determination. U.S. Gov’t 

Accountability Office, supra, at 3-4. 

Tribes also began to pursue individual and collective 

legal claims against the federal government seeking recovery 

of unpaid contract support costs. See, e.g., Cherokee Nation 

of Okla. v. Leavitt, 543 U.S. 631 (2005); Shoshone-Bannock 

Tribes of Fort Hall Reservation v. Sec’y, Dep’t of Health & 

Human Servs., 279 F.3d 660 (9th Cir. 2002); Babbitt v. 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 5 of 19
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Oglala Sioux Tribal Pub. Safety Dep’t, 194 F.3d 1374 (Fed. 

Cir. 1999); Ramah Navajo Chapter v. Lujan, 112 F.3d 1455 

(10th Cir. 1997); Ramah Navajo Sch. Bd., Inc. v. Babbitt, 87 

F.3d 1338 (D.C. Cir. 1996). The Menominee Tribe, however, 

neither filed claims with the agencies nor filed suit. It instead 

relied on two nationwide class actions brought by other tribes 

that it thought might vindicate its rights, and did not pursue its 

own claims more aggressively because the HHS’s Indian 

Health Service’s (IHS) consistent pattern of refusals to pay 

such claims led the Tribe to conclude that any such claims 

would be futile. 

The first of two tribal class actions brought the 

Menominee Tribe some relief on claims that are distinct from 

but legally analogous to the claims at issue here, and made the 

Tribe somewhat complacent about these claims. That case, 

brought by the Ramah Navajo Chapter, sought reimbursement 

of contract support costs from the Secretary of the Interior and 

its Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). See Ramah Navajo 

Chapter, 112 F.3d at 1458-59, 1461. The district court in 

Ramah certified a nationwide class of all tribal contractors, 

even those who had not exhausted their administrative 

remedies under the CDA, on the ground that the case 

challenged the legality of the BIA’s system-wide policies and 

practices, not the adequacy of its performance under specific 

contracts. Appellant Br. add. at 5a-6a (Ramah Navajo 

Chapter v. Lujan, No. CIV 90-0957 LH/RWM, Order 

(D.N.M. October 1, 1993)). The Menominee Tribe was a 

member of that class, and when the case settled, the Tribe 

received nearly $800,000 in compensation for BIA 

underpayments and equitable relief related to future BIA 

contract support cost payments. App. at 55, 63. 

The Menominee Tribe did not fare as well in the second 

class action, which sought recovery from the IHS of some of 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 6 of 19
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the costs that are at issue here. In 1999, the Cherokee Nation 

sued the Secretary of HHS on behalf of all tribal contractors, 

claiming that IHS had underfunded tribes’ contract support 

costs from 1988 to the present. The suit defined the proposed 

class in a manner that clearly included the Menominee Tribe. 

See Cherokee Nation of Okla. v. United States, 199 F.R.D. 

357, 360 (E.D. Okla. 2001). Given the Tribe’s experience 

with the Ramah class, it relied on the Cherokee Nation class 

action to represent it, and did not file its own claims with IHS 

administratively. The district court in Cherokee Nation, 

however, denied class certification on the ground that the 

class lacked commonality, typicality, and adequate 

representation. Id. at 363-66. Five months later, the district 

court denied the Cherokee Nation’s claim on the merits. 

Cherokee Nation of Okla. v. United States, 190 F. Supp. 2d 

1248, 1259-61 (E.D. Okla. 2001). The Cherokee Nation 

appealed the merits decision but not the denial of class 

certification, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed. See Cherokee 

Nation of Oklahoma v. United States, 311 F.3d 1054, 1063 

(10th Cir. 2002). 

While that lawsuit was pending, the Cherokee Nation 

also pursued identical contract support costs claims against 

the IHS for different years through the second route provided 

by the CDA—an administrative proceeding before the Interior 

Board of Contract Appeals (IBCA).3

 The Board ruled in 

favor of the Cherokee Nation, In re Cherokee Nation of Okla.,

IBCA Nos. 3877-79, 99-2 B.C.A. (CCH) ¶ 30,462, 1999 WL 

440045 (IBCA 1999), and the Federal Circuit affirmed, 

 

3

 The Cherokee Nation’s claims against IHS—a service within 

HHS, not Interior—were before the IBCA because the ISDA 

provides that “all administrative appeals relating to [self 

determination] contracts shall be heard by the Interior Board of 

Contract Appeals.” 25 U.S.C. § 450m-1(d). 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 7 of 19
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Thompson v. Cherokee Nation of Okla., 334 F.3d 1075, 1079 

(Fed. Cir. 2003). That decision created a circuit split with the 

Tenth Circuit’s Cherokee Nation decision and with a Ninth 

Circuit decision that had denied another tribe’s claims for 

contract support costs. See Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, 

311 F.3d at 1063; Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, 279 F.3d at 663. 

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in the two Cherokee 

Nation cases to resolve the circuit split. See Cherokee Nation, 

543 U.S. at 635-36. The Court held in the consolidated cases 

that, when Congress has appropriated sufficient unrestricted 

funds to pay a tribe’s contract support costs, the government 

cannot avoid its contractual obligation to pay those costs on 

grounds of “insufficient appropriations.” Id. at 636-38. 

On September 7, 2005, six months after the Cherokee 

Nation’s victory in the Supreme Court, the Menominee Tribe 

filed administrative claims with a contracting officer at the 

IHS to recover contract support costs for the years from 1995 

through 2004. Menominee Indian Tribe of Wis. v. United 

States (Menominee III), 841 F. Supp. 2d 99, 101-02, 106 

(D.D.C. 2012). The contracting officer denied the claims 

from 1996 through 1998 as untimely. Appellant Br. at 4. 

The Menominee Tribe challenged that decision in federal 

district court, arguing that the statute of limitations should 

have been tolled. See Menominee I, 539 F. Supp. 2d at 154 

n.2. The Tribe contended that, from March 5, 1999, the date 

the Cherokee Nation class action was filed, to February 9, 

2001, the date the district court in that case denied class 

certification—a period just shy of two years—the statute of 

limitations governing the Tribe’s claims for 1996, 1997, and 

1998 should have been tolled pursuant to the doctrine of 

class-action tolling. See Pls.’ Mem. in Opp’n at 30-35, 

Menominee I, 539 F. Supp. 2d 152 (No. 07-812). The Tribe 

argued that its claims for the years between 1996 through 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 8 of 19
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1998 accrued when its self determination contract expired in 

1998, and therefore all would have been timely had the 

limitations period been tolled for two years during the 

pendency of the Cherokee Nation motion for class 

certification. Id. at 33. In the alternative, the Tribe argued 

that its claims were eligible for equitable tolling. Id. at 35-41. 

The district court rejected the Tribe’s class-action and 

equitable tolling arguments in a footnote, Menominee I, 539 

F. Supp. 2d at 154 n.2, affirming the contracting officer’s 

denial of the Menominee Tribe’s claims. That court held that 

the statute of limitations for such claims is jurisdictional and 

thus categorically ineligible for tolling. Id. An earlier panel 

of this court reversed in part, agreeing that the Tribe was 

ineligible for class-action tolling, but holding that the statute 

of limitations in the CDA may be subject to equitable tolling. 

Menominee II, 614 F.3d at 529. We remanded to the district 

court “to determine whether tolling is appropriate under the 

circumstances of this case.” Id. at 531. On remand, the 

district court held that the Tribe’s failure to timely file its 

claims was not one of the “extraordinary and carefully 

circumscribed instances” justifying the exercise of the 

“court’s equitable power to toll the statute of limitations.” 

Menominee III, 841 F. Supp. 2d at 105 (quoting Mondy v. 

Sec’y of the Army, 845 F.2d 1051, 1057 (D.C. Cir. 1988)). 

This appeal followed. 

II. 

The parties disagree about the appropriate standard of 

review. The Menominee Tribe argues that our review is de 

novo. The government contends that abuse of discretion is 

the proper standard. We need not resolve that question, 

however, because, even applying non-deferential de novo 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 9 of 19
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review to the adverse ruling of the district court, we find that 

the circumstances of this case do not justify equitable tolling. 

Equitable tolling is available to a party “only if he shows 

‘(1) that he has been pursuing his rights diligently, and (2) 

that some extraordinary circumstance stood in his way’ and 

prevented timely filing.” Holland, 560 U.S. at 649 (quoting 

Pace, 544 U.S. at 418). The Supreme Court has emphasized 

that equitable tolling must be applied flexibly, case by case, 

without retreating to “mechanical rules” or “archaic rigidity.” 

Id. at 649-50 (internal quotation marks omitted). Holland

also emphasizes that courts must keep in view equity’s 

purposes: correcting particular injustices and “reliev[ing] 

hardships ‘which, from time to time, arise from a hard and 

fast adherence’ to more absolute legal rules.” Id. (quoting 

Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U.S. 238, 

248 (1944)). 

To count as sufficiently “extraordinary” to support 

equitable tolling, the circumstances that caused a litigant’s 

delay must have been beyond its control. See Dyson v. 

District of Columbia, 710 F.3d 415, 422 (D.C. Cir. 2013) 

(describing equitable tolling as a doctrine “meant to ensure 

that the plaintiff is not, by dint of circumstances beyond his 

control, deprived of a reasonable time in which to file suit” 

(brackets and internal quotation marks omitted)); see also, 

e.g., In re Wilson, 442 F.3d 872, 875 (5th Cir. 2006) (per 

curiam); Graham-Humphreys v. Memphis Brooks Museum of 

Art, Inc., 209 F.3d 552, 560-61 (6th Cir. 2000); Harris v. 

Hutchinson, 209 F.3d 325, 330-31 (4th Cir. 2000); Sandvik v. 

United States, 177 F.3d 1269, 1271-72 (11th Cir. 1999). The 

circumstance that stood in a litigant’s way cannot be a product 

of that litigant’s own misunderstanding of the law or tactical 

mistakes in litigation. When a deadline is missed as a result 

of a “garden variety claim of excusable neglect” or a “simple 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 10 of 19
11 

miscalculation,” equitable tolling is not justified. Holland, 

560 U.S. at 651 (internal quotation marks omitted); see

Griffith v. Rednour, 614 F.3d 328, 331 (7th Cir. 2010) (no 

tolling for a “simple legal mistake”); Cross-Bey v. Gammon, 

322 F.3d 1012, 1015 (8th Cir. 2003) (no tolling for “lack of 

legal knowledge or legal resources”); David v. Hall, 318 F.3d 

343, 346 (1st Cir. 2003) (no tolling for “routine error” and 

“carelessness”); Fahy v. Horn, 240 F.3d 239, 244 (3d Cir. 

2001) (no tolling for “miscalculation[s]” and “inadequate 

research”); Steed v. Head, 219 F.3d 1298, 1300 (11th Cir. 

2000) (no tolling for “miscalculation or misinterpretation”); 

Harris, 209 F.3d at 330 (no tolling for an “innocent 

misreading” of a statute); see also United States v. Sosa, 364 

F.3d 507, 512 (4th Cir. 2004) (no tolling for “ignorance of the 

law”); Delaney v. Matesanz, 264 F.3d 7, 15 (1st Cir. 2001) 

(same); Felder v. Johnson, 204 F.3d 168, 172 (5th Cir. 2000) 

(same); Marsh v. Soares, 223 F.3d 1217, 1220 (10th Cir. 

2000) (same); Rose v. Dole, 945 F.2d 1331, 1335 (6th Cir. 

1991) (same); Sch. Dist. of Allentown v. Marshall, 657 F.2d 

16, 21 (3d Cir. 1981) (same). 

The Menominee Tribe faced no extraordinary 

circumstances because the obstacles the Tribe confronted 

were ultimately of its own making. The Tribe makes three 

arguments that “extraordinary circumstances” prevented it 

from timely filing its claims. We examine them in turn to 

explain why we ultimately conclude that, while the events the 

Tribe identifies were perhaps confusing or discouraging, they 

cannot be characterized as “extraordinary circumstances” 

under Holland.

4

 At bottom, the Tribe’s inadequate responses 

 

4

 The Holland Court was explicit that equitable tolling is available 

to a party “only” if it shows (1) reasonable diligence and (2) 

extraordinary circumstances. 560 U.S. at 649; see Ross v. Varano, 

712 F.3d 784, 802 (3d Cir. 2013) (describing a showing of 

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to relatively routine legal events caused it to delay pursuing 

its claims. At no point was the Tribe prevented by external 

obstacles from timely filing. 

The Menominee Tribe’s first argument is that, because 

the Ramah district court certified a class action without 

requiring class members to exhaust administrative remedies, it 

was “logical to assume, as the tribe did” that the Tribe would 

also be a member of the Cherokee Nation class. Appellant 

Reply Br. at 14. The Tribe argues that it reasonably expected 

that, as a class member, it either could have recovered its 

costs through that litigation or, once the district court denied 

class certification, at least have the statute of limitations on its 

claims tolled for the two years the class certification motion 

had been pending, allowing it to timely file in 2005 claims 

that it contends accrued in 1998. 

 

extraordinary circumstances as “necessary to support equitable 

tolling”); Hall v. Warden, Lebanon Corr. Inst., 662 F.3d 745, 750 

(6th Cir. 2011) (holding that a litigant seeking equitable tolling 

“must demonstrate both that he has been diligent in pursuing his 

rights and that an extraordinary circumstance prevented his timely 

filing”); see also Manning v. Epps, 688 F.3d 177, 184 & n.2 (5th 

Cir. 2012) (same); Arthur v. Allen, 452 F.3d 1234, 1252 (11th Cir. 

2006) (same). But see Arctic Slope II, 699 F.3d 1289 (finding 

equitable tolling without separately addressing the two Holland

prongs). Because no extraordinary circumstances stood in the 

Tribe’s way, we need not pass on whether, under Holland’s first 

prong, the Tribe pursued its rights diligently. Nor do we reach the 

Tribe’s arguments that the court should consider various other 

equitable “factors,” such as whether the government would be 

prejudiced by the application of equitable tolling in this case, or 

whether equitable tolling should be more readily available to tribes 

given their special relationship to the United States. 

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The flaw in the Tribe’s calculations was that it was not 

eligible to participate in the Cherokee Nation class. Classaction tolling is available to members of yet-to-be-certified 

class actions. Under that doctrine, the “commencement of a 

class action suspends the applicable statute of limitations as to 

all asserted members of the class who would have been 

parties had the suit been permitted to continue as a class 

action.” Am. Pipe & Constr. Co. v. Utah, 414 U.S. 538, 554 

(1974). However, as we held in Menominee II, class-action 

tolling does not extend to putative class members who fail to 

satisfy known jurisdictional prerequisites to participation, 

because “[u]ntil they satisfy the jurisdictional preconditions to 

class membership,” they know for certain they will not be 

members of the resulting class. 614 F.3d at 528. Knowing 

they cannot participate whether a class is certified or not, they 

“face none of the uncertainty class-action tolling is meant to 

ameliorate.” Id. Therefore, in Menominee II, we held that 

because the Tribe had failed to exhaust its administrative 

remedies—and was therefore jurisdictionally barred from 

participating in the Cherokee Nation class—the Tribe was not 

entitled to class-action tolling during the pendency of the 

class certification motion in that case. Id. at 529. 

The Menominee Tribe now argues that it only discovered 

in 2010—when we rejected its claimed entitlement to classaction tolling in Menominee II—that it would be ineligible for 

tolling on that ground. Thus, according to the Tribe, it 

learned the effective deadline for filing its claims after it was 

already too late to meet it. But the Menominee Tribe’s belief 

that it could participate in the Cherokee Nation class without 

exhausting its administrative remedies was unjustified. 

Although the decision of the New Mexico district court in 

Ramah may have given the Tribe the impression that its 

failure to exhaust would not exclude it from the Cherokee 

Nation class, the weight of legal authority was to the contrary. 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 13 of 19
14 

As we explained in Menominee II, “[t]he Federal Circuit and 

the Court of Claims have long held that the court may not 

exercise jurisdiction until the contracting officer either issues 

a decision on the claim or is deemed to have denied it.” 614 

F.3d at 526 n.3. Where exhaustion is a prerequisite to the 

exercise of a court’s jurisdiction, “every class member must 

exhaust its administrative remedies.” Id. at 526. The Tribe’s 

reliance on Ramah as reason to expect that it was eligible to 

participate in the Cherokee class was the Tribe’s 

miscalculation, not an external circumstance beyond its 

reasonable control.5

The second obstacle the Menominee Tribe identifies also 

fails to clear the “extraordinary circumstance” threshold. The 

 

5

 A divided panel of the Federal Circuit held that equitable tolling 

was warranted in Arctic Slope II, 699 F.3d 1289, a case similar to 

this one, because the Tribes “took reasonable, diligent, and 

appropriate action as the legal landscape evolved,” id. at 1297, and 

reasonably relied on Ramah and Pueblo of Zuni v. United States, 

467 F. Supp. 2d 1099 (D.N.M. 2006), which the court described as 

“controlling legal authority . . . that [the Tribes] did not need to 

exhaust administrative remedies to be a class member,” id. at 1298. 

The Federal Circuit also found that tolling would not disadvantage 

the government. Id. at 1297. The Arctic Slope II majority did not 

separately address Holland’s requirement of “extraordinary 

circumstances,” however, beyond a concluding comment that the 

case involved “unique facts and extraordinary circumstances” that, 

together with the government’s fiduciary duty to the Tribes, 

warranted equitable tolling. Id. at 1297. In our view, the Arctic 

Slope II majority failed to identify any obstacle that stood in the 

Tribe’s way to prevent timely filing of its claims, as required by 

Holland’s second prong. We thus agree with the dissent in Arctic 

Slope II that equitable tolling was unwarranted there, as it is here, 

for want of an “extraordinary circumstance” under Holland. 699 

F.3d at 1300 (Bryson, J., dissenting). 

USCA Case #12-5217 Document #1510140 Filed: 09/02/2014 Page 14 of 19
15 

Tribe argues that the certainty of failure it confronted in 

bringing its claims was an impediment that stood in its way. 

According to the Menominee Tribe, the IHS’s legal position 

that it was not obligated to pay contract support costs and its 

pattern of refusals to pay such costs meant that the Tribe 

confronted a legal landscape so bleak that filing a claim 

would have been “a fruitless exercise, with no hope of 

success.” Appellant Reply Br. at 15. It was “obvious IHS 

would deny any claims,” says the Tribe, given the agency’s 

“consistent position interpreting the statute to allow it to fund 

less than 100% of [contract support costs].” Id. at 13. 

The Menominee Tribe failed to take the steps it would 

have needed to take to preserve its claims pending judicial 

correction of IHS’s error. A party is not excused from timely 

filing its claim because the agency’s view of the law might be 

inhospitable. The federal courts, not contracting officers, are 

the final word on federal law, and “[t]he only sure way to 

determine whether a suit can be maintained is to try it.” 

Commc’ns Vending Corp. of Ariz. v. FCC, 365 F.3d 1064, 

1075 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (quoting Fiesel v. Bd. of Ed. of New 

York, 675 F.2d 522, 524 (2d Cir. 1982)). As we have 

explained, “a suitor cannot toll or suspend the running of the 

statute by relying upon the uncertainties of controlling law. It 

is incumbent upon him to test his right and remedy in the 

available forums.” Id. (quoting Fiesel, 675 F.2d at 524-25). 

Even though the Tribe doubted the viability of its arguments, 

its claims had the same probability of success as the Cherokee 

Nation’s claims that ultimately succeeded before the Supreme 

Court. 

No matter how adverse the agency’s legal position and 

the Ninth and Tenth Circuits’ precedents may have been, they 

did not stand in the Tribe’s way. Under the ISDA, tribes have 

some choice about where they file their claims, and thus need 

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not pursue their claims in jurisdictions with adverse 

precedent, but may proceed to any federal district court with 

jurisdiction over the agency where venue is proper. See

Menominee II, 614 F.3d at 522. Before 2002, no circuit had 

excused the government from its obligation to fully fund 

contract support costs out of unrestricted appropriations. 

Even after the Ninth and Tenth Circuits held against other 

tribes on claims like the Menominee Tribe’s, the Tribe could 

have appealed a contracting officer’s claim denial in another 

circuit, and had something more than “no hope of success.” 

Pursuant to the CDA, the Tribe could also have obtained 

review in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Until 

2003, that court had not yet settled the question whether the 

government had a contractual obligation to pay tribal 

contractors for all their contract support costs, and by 2003—

two years before the Supreme Court decided Cherokee 

Nation—had ruled in favor of plaintiffs on claims essentially 

identical to the Menominee Tribe’s. See Thompson, 334 F.3d 

at 1087-88. From that point onward, the Tribe could have 

appealed to that court and won. 

Even assuming the Menominee Tribe lacked the 

resources to pursue its own litigation in federal court, its 

eligibility to participate in the Cherokee Nation class would 

have required nothing more than some paperwork. The 

procedure for exhausting administrative remedies is simple, 

and the Tribe has not argued otherwise. See Menominee III, 

841 F. Supp. 2d at 102 (explaining that pursuing a CDA claim 

“‘need not be elaborate’ and can be reflected in letters alone” 

(quoting Arctic Slope I, 583 F.3d at 797)). Even if a 

contracting officer were to deny the Menominee Tribe’s 

claim, exhaustion of administrative remedies would have 

made the Tribe eligible to participate in the Cherokee Nation

class, and thus entitled it to class-action tolling while the 

motion for class certification was pending in that case. What 

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17 

stood between the Tribe and class-action tolling was little 

more than an envelope and a stamp. 

The Menominee Tribe cites cases holding that a lack of 

clear legal precedent might constitute an extraordinary 

circumstance. See, e.g., Harris v. Carter, 515 F.3d 1051 (9th 

Cir. 2008); Capital Tracing, Inc. v. United States, 63 F.3d 859 

(9th Cir. 1995). We do not disagree. One can imagine 

circumstances in which the law might be so unfavorable that 

it functions as an obstacle and perhaps even rises to the level 

of an extraordinary circumstance. In Harris and Capital 

Tracing, for example, the parties relied “in good faith on thenbinding circuit precedent” in deciding when and how to file 

their claims. Harris, 515 F.3d at 1055; see Capital Tracing, 

63 F.3d at 863. Because it was only as a result of the reversal 

of previously binding precedent that the parties’ claims 

became untimely, the courts determined that equitable tolling 

was appropriate. The general rule, however, is that legal 

decisions based on unclear or contrary precedent justify 

equitable tolling in only the rarest instances. See Boling v. 

United States, 220 F.3d 1365, 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2000) 

(declining to equitably toll statute of limitations even where 

the underlying action appeared futile during the limitations 

period). 

Finally, even if no single circumstance stood in its way, 

the Menominee Tribe argues, the Court should consider all 

the factors that the Tribe faced as jointly amounting to an 

“extraordinary” obstacle. The Tribe points to “the breadth 

and complexity of [the contract support costs] litigation 

involving hundreds of tribes, the precedent of a similar prior 

class action in which the Tribe was a member of the class, the 

unique government-to-government and trust relationship 

between the United States and the Tribe, and the unsettled 

case law regarding the legal standard governing the 

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18 

Government’s duty to pay full [contract support costs] under 

the ISDA.” Appellant Br. at 17. 

That argument fails because none of the many factors the 

Tribe identifies are external obstacles that prevented the Tribe 

from bringing its claims. Some are not obstacles. Neither the 

“unique government-to-government and trust relationship 

between the United States and the Tribe,” id. at 17, nor the 

“litigation history” surrounding contract support costs claims, 

id. at 19, were capable of standing in the Tribe’s way. Others 

we cannot accept. If a lawsuit’s “breadth and complexity” 

were an “extraordinary circumstance,” few statutes of 

limitations would function. And the remaining 

circumstances—the Tribe’s mistaken belief that it would be 

entitled to class-action tolling and that its claims had no hope 

of success—were the Tribe’s own missteps. On the facts of 

this case, we cannot conclude that a series of events, none 

extraordinary on its own, piled up to create an extraordinary 

obstacle. 

III. 

The Menominee Tribe also appeals the denial of two 

“stable-funding” claims—that is, claims that the Tribe was 

entitled to contract support cost funding in 1999-2000 at least 

as high as that paid by the government in 1998. The parties 

appear to agree, and the court below held, that those claims 

are time barred unless the limitations period on the Tribe’s 

1997 and 1998 claims is tolled. See Menominee III, 841 F. 

Supp. 2d at 111; Appellant Br. at 48-49; Appellee Br. at 47. 

Because, for the reasons discussed above, the circumstances 

here do not warrant equitable tolling on the Tribe’s 1997 and 

1998 claims, we affirm the judgment of the district court 

dismissing the Tribe’s 1999-2000 stable funding claims. 

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* * * 

Delays caused by a party’s inauspicious legal judgments 

are not “extraordinary circumstance[s]” sufficient to justify 

equitable tolling. Faced with a variety of reasonable litigation 

options, the Menominee Tribe chose to wait and see if more 

favorable law would appear. In so doing, the Tribe allowed 

its claims to expire. Because we find that no obstacle stood in 

the Menominee Tribe’s way of bringing the claims within the 

limitations period, the judgment of the district court is 

affirmed. 

So ordered. 

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