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Page Number: 43.0

22 

ARIZONA v. NAVAJO NATION 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

States, or Executive orders of the President.”  Ibid.  Nota-
bly,  however,  the  Tucker  Acts  provide  only  a  selective
waiver of sovereign immunity, not a cause of action.  To de-
termine whether a Tribe can seek money damages on any 
given claim, this Court has laid out a two-part test.  First, 
a court must ascertain whether there exists “specific rights-
creating or duty-imposing statutory or regulatory prescrip-
tions,” Navajo I, 537 U. S., at 506, producing a scheme that
bears the “hallmarks of a more conventional fiduciary rela-
tionship,”  United  States  v.  White  Mountain  Apache  Tribe, 
537 U. S. 465, 473 (2003).  Second, once a Tribe has identi-
fied such a provision, the court must use “trust principles”
to assess whether (and in what amount) the United States
owes damages.  United States v. Navajo Nation, 556 U. S. 
287, 301 (2009) (Navajo II ).

To describe this regime is to explain why the Court errs 
in relying on it.  The Navajo do not bring a claim for money 
damages in the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker 
Acts  (thereby  implicating  those  Acts’  selective  waiver  of 
sovereign immunity).  Rather, the Navajo seek equitable re-
lief in federal district court on a treaty claim governed by
the familiar principles recounted above.  See supra, at 12– 
17.  They do so with the help of 28 U. S. C. §1362, a provi-
sion enacted after the Tucker Acts that gives federal district
courts “original jurisdiction” over “civil actions” brought by
Tribes  “under  the  Constitution,  laws,  or  treaties  of  the 
United States.”  Ibid.; see also Brief for Historians as Amici 
Curiae 31.  As this Court has noted, §1362 serves “to open
the federal courts to the kind of claims that could have been 
brought by the United States as trustee, but for whatever
reason were not so brought.”  Moe, 425 U. S., at 472.  That 
perfectly  summarizes  the  claim  that  the  Navajo  advance
here—a  treaty-based  claim  bottomed  on  Winters  that  all 
agree the United States could bring in its capacity as a trus-
tee.  Nor does anyone question that the United States has 
waived sovereign immunity for claims “seeking relief other