Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 160.0

524US1

Unit: $U77

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

Cite as: 524 U. S. 103 (1998)

115

Opinion of the Court

this, because in 1995 it successfully applied to the Secretary
of the Interior under § 465 to restore federal trust status to
seven of the eight parcels at issue here. See Complaint ¶ 18
and Afﬁdavit of Joseph F. Halloran in support of Plaintiff ’s
Motion for Summary Judgment, in Civ. No. 5–95–99, ¶ V (DC
Minn.); Tr. of Oral Arg. 9.5

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*

*

When Congress makes Indian reservation land freely
alienable, it manifests an unmistakably clear intent to render
such land subject to state and local taxation. The re-
purchase of such land by an Indian tribe does not cause the
land to reassume tax-exempt status. The eight parcels at
issue here were therefore taxable unless and until they were
restored to federal trust protection under § 465. The judg-
ment of the Court of Appeals with respect to those lands
is reversed.

It is so ordered.

5 The Leech Lake Band and the United States, as amicus, also argue
that the parcels at issue here are not alienable—and therefore not tax-
able—under the terms of the Indian Nonintercourse Act, which provides:
“No purchase, grant, lease, or other conveyance of lands . . . from any
Indian nation or tribe . . . shall be of any validity in law or equity, unless
the same be made by treaty or convention entered into pursuant to the
Constitution.”

25 U. S. C. § 177.

This Court has never determined whether the Indian Nonintercourse
Act, which was enacted in 1834, applies to land that has been rendered
alienable by Congress and later reacquired by an Indian tribe. Because
the parcels at issue here are not alienable—and therefore not taxable—
under the terms of the Indian Nonintercourse Act, which provides: “No
taxation if it remains freely alienable”, and because it was not addressed
by the Court of Appeals, we decline to consider it for the ﬁrst time in this
Court. See, e. g., Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Epstein, 516 U. S. 367,
379, n. 5 (1996) (declining to address issue both because it was “outside
the scope of the question presented in this Court” and because “we gener-
ally do not address arguments that were not the basis for the decision
below”).