Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-543_3e04.pdf
Page Number: 30.0

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

27 

Opinion of the Court 

Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation 13 (“The recog-
nized  relationship  is  a  political  relationship  between  the 
United States and the tribe”); see also, e.g., note following
25 U. S. C. §5130, p. 678 (“ ‘[T]he United State has a trust 
responsibility  to  recognized  Indian  tribes,  maintains  a 
government-to-government relationships with those tribes,
and recognizes the sovereignty of those tribes’ ”).  In addi-
tion, the CARES Act’s use of the term “recognized govern-
ing body” is borrowed from ISDA itself, which lists the “rec-
ognized  governing  body”  of  an  Indian  tribe  as  one  type  of
“tribal organization” empowered to contract  with the gov-
ernment on the tribe’s behalf.  §5304(l).  In the ISDA con-
text,  this  term  has  long  been  understood  to  apply  to  an 
ANC’s  board  of  directors,  the  ANC’s  governing  body  as  a
matter of corporate law.  See, e.g., App. 45 (An ANC’s “board 
of directors . . . is its ‘governing body’ ”); see also Black’s Law 
Dictionary,  at  219  (defining  “Board  of  Directors”  as  “[t]he
governing body of a private corporation”).  Indeed, respond-
ents do not dispute that the plain meaning of “recognized
governing body” covers an ANC’s board of directors.11 

Looking  to  the  plain  meaning  of  “recognized  governing
body” makes even more sense because nothing in either the 
CARES  Act  or  ISDA  suggests  that  the  term  “recognized
governing body” places additional limits on the kinds of In-
dian tribes eligible to benefit under the statutes.  In both 
laws, the term instead pinpoints the particular entity that 
will  receive  funding  on  behalf  of  an  Indian  tribe.  See  42 
U. S. C. §801(g)(5); 25 U. S. C. §5304(l).  Because ANCs are 
Indian  tribes  within  the  meaning  of  the  CARES  Act,  an 
ANC’s board of directors is a “recognized governing body”
eligible to receive funding under Title V of the Act. 

—————— 

11 The Utes rely also on Seldovia Native Assn., Inc. v. Lujan, 904 F. 2d 
1335 (CA9 1990).  Seldovia never discussed the term “recognized govern-
ing body” and concerned whether ANCs are Indian tribes for purposes of 
Circuit precedent construing the Eleventh Amendment.  Id., at 1350.