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YELLEN v. CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF CHEHALIS 
RESERVATION 
Syllabus 

tribes  sued.  The  District  Court  entered  summary  judgment  for  the 
Treasury Department and the ANCs, but the Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit reversed. 

Held: ANCs are “Indian tribe[s]” under ISDA and thus eligible for fund-

ing under Title V of the CARES Act.  Pp. 7–28. 

(a) The ANCs argue that they fall under the plain meaning of ISDA’s
definition  of  “Indian  tribe.”    Respondents  ask  the  Court  to  adopt  a 
term-of-art construction that equates being “recognized as eligible for
the special programs and services provided by the United States to In-
dians because of their status as Indians” with being a “federally recog-
nized tribe.”  Pp. 7–25.

(1) Under  the  plain  meaning  of  ISDA,  ANCs  are  Indian  tribes. 
ANCs are “established pursuant to” ANCSA and thereby “recognized 
as eligible” for that Act’s benefits.  ANCSA, which made ANCs eligible 
to select tens of millions of acres of land and receive hundreds of mil-
lions of tax-exempt dollars, 43 U. S. C. §§1605, 1610, 1611, is a special
program provided by the United States to “Indians,” i.e., Alaska Na-
tives.  Given that ANCSA is the only statute ISDA’s “Indian tribe” def-
inition mentions by name, eligibility for ANCSA’s benefits satisfies the
definition’s final “recognized-as-eligible” clause.  Pp. 7–11.

(2) Respondents ask the Court to read ISDA’s “Indian tribe” defi-
nition as a term of art.  But respondents fail to establish that the lan-
guage of ISDA’s recognized-as-eligible clause was an accepted way of 
saying “a federally recognized tribe” in 1975, when ISDA was passed.
Nor is the mere inclusion of the word “recognized” enough to import a 
term-of-art meaning.  Respondents also fail to show that the language
of  the  recognized-as-eligible  clause  later  became  a  term  of  art  that 
should be backdated to ISDA’s passage in 1975.  Pp. 11–18.

(3) Even if ANCs did not satisfy the recognized-as-eligible clause,
they  would  still  satisfy  ISDA’s  definition  of  an  “Indian  tribe.”    If  re-
spondents were correct that only a federally recognized tribe can sat-
isfy that clause, then the best way to read the “Indian tribe” definition
would be for the recognized-as-eligible clause not to apply to ANCs at
all.  Otherwise, despite being prominently “includ[ed]” in the “Indian
tribe” definition, 25 U. S. C. §5304(e), all ANCs would be excluded by
a federal-recognition requirement there is no reasonable prospect they 
could ever satisfy.  Pp. 18–23.

(4) Respondents’ remaining arguments that ANCs are not Indian
tribes under ISDA are unpersuasive.  They first argue that the ANCs
misrepresent how meaningful a role they play under ISDA because the 
actual  number  of  ISDA  contracts  held  by  ANCs  is  negligible.  This 
point is largely irrelevant.  No one would argue that a federally recog-
nized  tribe  was  not  an  Indian  tribe  under  ISDA  just  because  it  had 
never entered into an ISDA contract.  Respondents further argue that