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524US1

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Syllabus

CASS COUNTY, MINNESOTA, et al. v. LEECH LAKE
BAND OF CHIPPEWA INDIANS

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the eighth circuit

No. 97–174. Argued February 24, 1998—Decided June 8, 1998

During the late 19th century, the Federal Government instituted a policy
of removing portions of reservation land from tribal ownership and fed-
eral protection, allotting some parcels to individual Indians in fee simple
and providing for other parcels to be sold to non-Indians. Most allot-
ments were implemented pursuant to the General Allotment Act (GAA),
which provided that land would be patented to individual Indians and
held in trust for 25 years, after which title would be conveyed in fee
simple, § 5, and that Indian allottees were subject to plenary state juris-
diction, § 6. The Burke Act amended § 6 to provide that state jurisdic-
tion did not attach until the end of the trust period, and contained a
proviso to the effect that the Secretary of the Interior could issue a fee
simple patent before the trust period’s end and thereafter restrictions as
to, inter alia, taxation would be removed. Allotment of the Minnesota
reservation lands of respondent Leech Lake Band of Chippewa Indians
(Band) was implemented through the Nelson Act of 1889, which pro-
vided for the reservation land to be alienated from tribal ownership in
three ways: under § 3, parcels were allotted to individual Indians as
provided by the GAA; under §§ 4 and 5, pine lands were sold at public
auction to non-Indians; and under § 6, agricultural lands were sold to
non-Indian settlers as homesteads. After Congress ended the allot-
ment practice, the Band began purchasing back parcels of reservation
land that had been allotted to individual Indians or sold to non-Indians.
Based on this Court’s decision, in County of Yakima v. Confederated
Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 502 U. S. 251, 253–254, that a
county could assess ad valorem taxes on reservation land owned in fee
by individual Indians or the tribe that had originally been made alien-
able when patented under the GAA, petitioner Cass County began as-
sessing such taxes on 21 parcels of reservation land that had been alien-
ated under the Nelson Act and reacquired by the Band. Thirteen of
the parcels had been allotted to Indians and the remaining eight had
been sold to non-Indians. The Band paid the taxes, interest, and penal-
ties under protest and ﬁled suit seeking a declaratory judgment that the
county could not tax the parcels. The District Court granted the
county summary judgment, holding that the parcels were taxable be-