NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UPPER LAKE POMO ASSOCIATION, 

Plaintiff, 

and 

JESSICA JACKSON, 

Movant-Appellant, 

 v. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; DAVID 

L. BERNHARDT, Secretary of the Interior; 

CECIL ANDRUS, Former Secretary of the 

Interior; AMY DUTSCHKE; TROY 

BURDICK, 

Defendants-Appellees, 

and 

ROGERS C.B. MORTON, 

Defendant, 

APRIL DIWALD, 

Movant-Appellee.

No. 18-16764 

D.C. No. 4:75-cv-00181-PJH 

MEMORANDUM*

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

FILED

MAR 16 2020

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
2 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of California

Phyllis J. Hamilton, Chief District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 14, 2020

San Francisco, California

Before: RAWLINSON and CALLAHAN, Circuit Judges, and S. MURPHY,**

District Judge.

Plaintiff-Appellant Jessica Jackson appeals the district court’s denial of her 

motion to hold federal officials in civil contempt of the district court’s 1979 Order 

Granting Partial Summary Judgment (“Order”) and 1983 Order and Final 

Judgment on Claims for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief (“Judgment”). The 

Order and Judgment provided injunctive relief to members of the Upper Lake 

Pomo Indian Tribe after the federal government converted their trust lands to 

private property, in violation of substantive provisions of the California Rancheria 

Act, Act of Aug. 18, 1958, Pub. L. 85-671, 72 Stat. 619, as amended by the Act of 

August 11, 1964, Pub. L. 88-419, 78 Stat. 390. The Order and Judgment entitled

Tribe members—including Jackson’s mother, Amerdine Snow McCloud, now 

deceased—to convey their deeded lands back to the United States via the Secretary 

of the Interior (“Secretary”) to be held in trust for the benefit of the Tribe, subject 

to certain conditions and procedural requirements discussed below. 

** The Honorable Stephen J. Murphy, III, United States District Judge 

for the Eastern District of Michigan, sitting by designation.
3 

The question presented in this appeal is not whether the Secretary’s failure 

to restore McCloud’s property to trust status violated the district court’s Order and 

Judgment. It is whether Jackson has shown that, in denying McCloud’s (and 

Jackson’s) various requests to convey the property into trust, the Secretary (1) 

violated the Order and Judgment, “(2) beyond substantial compliance, (3) not 

based on a good faith and reasonable interpretation . . . , (4) by clear and 

convincing evidence.” Labor/Cmty. Strategy Ctr. v. L.A. Cty. Metro. Transp. 

Auth., 564 F.3d 1115, 1123 (9th Cir. 2009) (citation omitted). Furthermore, 

Jackson must show that the district court, in denying her motion, abused its 

discretion by “misapprehend[ing] the law or rest[ing] its decision on a clearly 

erroneous finding of a material fact.” Hallett v. Morgan, 296 F.3d 732, 749 (9th 

Cir. 2002). 

We hold that Jackson has not met her burden.1 Her argument rests almost 

entirely on the first sentence of paragraph i. of the Judgment, which recognizes the 

Secretary’s “continuing obligation to restore to trust status lands of the Upper Lake 

Rancheria . . . whenever possible.” She largely ignores the subparagraphs that 

follow, which set forth conditions and procedures for how “[r]estoration of trust 

status shall be accomplished.” But those subparagraphs are key here.

1 Because the parties are familiar with the facts of this case, we do not 

discuss them at length here.
4 

First, as the government points out, paragraph i.(3) of the Judgment 

expressly gives the Secretary authority, “[b]efore accepting any instrument of 

conveyance which has the effect of restoring trust status to lands within the 

Rancheria, . . . to approve or reject said instrument as to form.” The district court 

found that “the government had reason to refuse each attempted conveyance,” 

including due to unnotarized grant deeds, unpaid property taxes, McCloud’s 

erroneous listing of the wrong Parcel, and, after McCloud’s death, the state probate 

matter. Jackson provides no counterargument that the Secretary’s refusals were 

based on something other than “a good faith and reasonable interpretation of the 

order.” Labor/Cmty. Strategy Ctr., 564 F.3d at 1123. 

Second, paragraph i.(2) of the Judgment sets forth a one-year time limit for a 

Tribe member “to convey his or her interest to the United States, to be held in 

trust,” and paragraph i.(5) vests authority in the district court to modify “[t]he time 

limits for restoring trust status to lands of the Rancheria . . . upon application of 

any party to this action showing good cause for such action[.]” It is undisputed 

that McCloud (1) failed to submit her desired grant deed within one year of the 

Judgment, and (2) never asked the district court for an extension of the one-year 

time limit for conveying her property to trust status.2 

2 Though the district court did not explicitly address this issue, we may 

affirm on “any ground supported by the record.” Thompson v. Paul, 547 F.3d 

1055, 1059 (9th Cir. 2008).
5 

We therefore agree with the district court that McCloud’s property was 

neither actively nor constructively restored to trust status before she died intestate 

in 2001. Once ownership of the property is determined by the state probate court, 

the rightful owner is free to request restoration of the property to trust status at that 

time. As the district court noted, “the government has represented repeatedly that, 

notwithstanding the one-year limitation provided by the 1983 Order, it will accept 

the Parcel into trust if petitioned to do so by its owners, once the state identifies the 

true owners.” The district court also stated that it “will hold the government to that 

promise.”

Jackson presents a sympathetic case. However, in light of the civil contempt 

standard, the plain text of the Order and Judgment, and the district court’s “wide 

latitude in making a determination of whether there has been contemptuous 

defiance of its own orders,” Neebars, Inc. v. Long Bar Grinding, Inc., 438 F.2d 47, 

48 (9th Cir. 1971), Jackson cannot show that the district court abused its discretion 

in declining to hold federal officials in contempt. Accordingly, we AFFIRM.