Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 155

524US1

Unit: $U77

[09-06-00 18:33:45] PAGES PGT: OPIN

110

CASS COUNTY v. LEECH LAKE BAND OF
CHIPPEWA INDIANS
Opinion of the Court

majority held that the 13 parcels allotted to individual Indi-
ans under § 3 of the Nelson Act could be taxed so long as
the District Court conﬁrmed on remand that they had been
patented after passage of the Burke Act proviso, because the
explicit mention of “taxation” in the proviso manifested the
Id., at 827, 829–830.
necessary “unmistakably clear” intent.
But the panel majority further held that the eight parcels
sold as pine lands or homestead land under §§ 4–6 of the Nel-
son Act could not be taxed because those sections, “unlike
§ 3, did not incorporate the GAA or include any mention of
an intent to tax lands distributed under them which might
become reacquired by the Band in fee.”

Id., at 829.

Judge Magill concurred with the majority on the taxability
of the 13 allotted parcels, but he dissented from the holding
that the remaining 8 parcels were not also taxable.
In his
view, Yakima propounded “the clear rule . . . that alienability
allows taxation.”

108 F. 3d, at 831.

We granted certiorari, 522 U. S. 944 (1997), to decide
whether Cass County may impose its ad valorem property
tax on the seven parcels sold as pine lands and the one sold
as a homestead to non-Indians.2

II

State and local governments may not tax Indian reserva-
tion land “ ‘absent cession of jurisdiction or other federal
statutes permitting it.’ ” County of Yakima v. Confeder-
ated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 502 U. S., at 258
(quoting Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones, 411 U. S. 145, 148
(1973)). We have consistently declined to ﬁnd that Congress
has authorized such taxation unless it has “ ‘made its inten-
tion to do so unmistakably clear.’ ” Yakima, supra, at 258
(quoting Montana v. Blackfeet Tribe, 471 U. S. 759, 765
(1985)). We have determined that Congress has manifested

2 We denied the cross-petition for a writ of certiorari ﬁled by the Band,
which sought review of the holding by the courts below that the 13 parcels
allotted to Indians under § 3 of the Nelson Act are taxable.