Source: http://www.usetinc.org/uset-sovereignty-protection-fund/legislation-policy/litigation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 15:06:57+00:00

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Petitioners challenge the FCC’s legal authority to promulgate regulations implementing the National Historic Preservation Act (“NHPA”) and categorically excluding itself from its statutory obligation to comply with Section 106 of the NHPA.
Brief for Amicus Curiae including United South and Eastern Tribes, Inc.
Amici are individual federally recognized Indian Tribal Nations from across Indian Country, along with leading national and regional Indian organizations. The vital protections provided by the Indian Child Welfare Act to Indian children, Indian families, and Indian tribes is of significant important to amici and their members. The challenge to ICWA presented by Plaintiffs seek to diminish ICWA’s protections and undermine the unique trust responsibilities the United States owes to Indian children and Tribal Nations.
State courts around the country have recognized that tribal sovereign immunity, like the immunity of other sovereigns, extends to tort claims to the extent not waived or abrogated. Yet, even as Tribal Nations have waived immunity in tribal court or otherwise provided for redress of such claims in a manner similar to other governments, some state courts have ignored that fact and complained that the lack of a state court remedy against tribal governments renders the doctrine of sovereign immunity intolerable and unjust when invoked by Tribal Nations. The extent of this phenomenon suggests that, were this Court to abstain from correcting the Alabama Supreme Court’s erroneous ruling, other state courts would view that abstention as permission to draw their own narrow boundaries around tribal sovereign immunity in contravention of this Court’s precedents and Congress’ policy judgments.
If the United States, instead of the Tribe, had purchased the fee land in question, this lawsuit presumably would have been dismissed by Washington courts. Over the past 60 years,3 this Court has repeatedly stated that federal sovereign immunity cannot be evaded by sleights of hand such as naming a governmental official, or bringing an in rem action against government property. E.g., Block v. North Dakota ex rel. Bd. of Univ. & Sch. Lands, 461 U.S. 273, 280-86 (1983) (dismissing North Dakota’s suit seeking to quiet title to federal lands that supposedly passed into state ownership pursuant to the equal footing doctrine); Malone, 369 U.S. at 643-45 (holding that sovereign immunity barred an action for ejectment against a U.S. Forest Service official, where private plaintiffs claimed they *5 were the rightful owners of land purchased by the United States). If the government is the real party in interest, the suit is barred regardless of the named defendant, unless a clear and unequivocal waiver has been granted.4 Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U.S. 682, 687-88 (1949).
Amici agree with Petitioners, the Penobscot Nation (“Nation”) and the United States, that the Panel’s decision conflicts with Alaska Pacific Fisheries v. United States, 248 U.S. 78 (1918), and Maine v. Johnson, 498 F.3d 37 (1st Cir. 2007). In addition, and of great concern to Amici, the Panel applied the incorrect legal standard to interpret the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act (“MICSA”),1 including provisions incorporating the Maine Implementing Act2 (together, “Settlement Acts”). The Panel ignored general rules of statutory construction, and the particular rules for construing statutes enacted for the benefit of Indians. The Panel also ignored the longstanding Supreme Court and First Circuit rule that Congress must act clearly when it divests a Tribe of its existing rights, and that all rights not clearly abrogated remain with the Tribe.
The Court’s decision upholding tribal sovereign immunity was correctly reached and in line with well-established law. A decision by the Court to now certify appellees’ question as an issue of great public importance warranting Florida Supreme Court review would breathe life into appellees’ wrongful attempt to narrow tribal sovereign immunity. It would imply that case law regarding tribal sovereign immunity in this context is anything less than steadfast and clear. Amici therefore have a strong interest in urging this Court not to certify the question to the Florida Supreme Court.
DAPL Amicus Workgroup – NCAI, Tribes, Organizations Filed February 21, 2017 The Amici Tribes have suffered the vast loss of lands and other fundamental resources and rights reserved to them under law, often by solemn treaty obligation, when the federal government determined it was advantageous to disavow its prior commitments to them. Some of the most grievous losses are not remnants of a distant past, but as in the case of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Sioux nations, took place within living memory. The loss of tribal lands, communities, and indeed entire ways of life due to the infrastructure projects, development, and rampant pollution of the twentieth century is an all-too-familiar tale for Indian peoples, and examples of such dispossession span the breadth of the country.
USET Sovereign Immunity Amicus (Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida) January 23, 2017 In the modern era, tribal sovereign immunity has taken on new significance for Indian tribes across the United States. As Indian tribal economies have had an increasingly significant impact on the surrounding communities and economies, tribes have developed advanced court systems, adopted government tort claims acts similar to federal and state governments, and entered into countless contracts and agreements where they have carefully negotiated limited waivers of sovereign immunity for a myriad of purposes and as part of a bargained-for exchange. All of these developments are based on established doctrines regarding the nature of tribal sovereign immunity found in federal law and set forth in this memorandum. The decision below tears at the fabric of these doctrines in a manner that destabilizes this area of law and would undermine well-recognized tribal authority to define the terms of sovereign immunity waivers.
Amici Tribes and USET member Tribal Nations (collectively “Amici Tribes”) have a strong interest in this case because of its potential impact on the scope of immunity for tribal officials and employees and the range of core sovereign interests that immunity protects.4 But Amici Tribes’ interest in this case also extends to its potential impact on a wide array of negotiated intergovernmental agreements and tribal laws that govern Amici Tribes’ working relationships with their sister governments and commitments to individual state and tribal citizens, and which specify tort remedies and immunity waivers as negotiated *3 between the sovereigns and as appropriate to the specific parties and their situations. These agreements include Tribal-State gaming compacts entered into under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 25 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq. (IGRA), through which Congress has preempted the field of Indian gaming. Under the IGRA, Tribes and States that wish to negotiate remedies for tort claims related to Class III gaming must use the Tribal-State compact process.
* HSDW Memo March 27, 2017: Report on the Oral Argument Held Friday, March 24, 2017 in Redding Rancheria v. Price Amici and their member tribes have a strong interest in this litigation because the IHS has taken the position in its briefs that Section 2901(b) of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), 25 U.S.C. § 1623(b), overrides the IHS’s longstanding policy exempting tribal self-insurance plans from its “payer of last resort” rule for purposes of CHS and CHEF. This is the first time the IHS has taken such a position in the six years since that provision was enacted by Congress.
Amicus Brief in support of Shinnecock Indian Nation No. 15-1215 April 28, 2016 We submit this brief to highlight the extent to which the remarkably troubling ruling below – conferring a large and amorphous “equitable” immunity, based on the “disruption” associated with the passage of time, for violations of federal statutes, treaties, and common law – (1) undermines responsible reservation governance initiative and interrupts a long history of good faith resolution of Indian claims in accordance with the United States’ duty of protection to Indian nations and Indian people, and (2) contravenes the considered judgments of the executive and legislative branches and of this Court.
USET Participates in Little River Band of Ottawa Amicus Brief – March 17, 2016 Amici share a strong interest in this case because of the impact the Sixth Circuit’s ruling will have on their ability as governmental entities to regulate the presence and conduct of labor organizations on their tribal lands, and to effectively manage the impacts of organized labor activity on their delivery of essential governmental services to tribal citizens. As illustrated in this brief, many Tribes including amici and USET member Tribes have in place tribal laws to govern public sector employment and protect governmental programs, services, and interests.3 The ruling below threatens the ability of Tribes to adopt and enforce those laws. As such, this case implicates the self-government rights and sovereign interests of amici Tribes and USET member Tribes.
Amici share a strong interest in this case because of the impact the Sixth Circuit’s ruling will have on their ability as governmental entities to regulate the presence and conduct of labor organizations on their tribal lands, and to effectively manage the impacts of organized labor activity on their delivery of essential governmental services to tribal citizens. As illustrated in this brief, many Tribes including amici and USET member Tribes have in place tribal laws to govern public sector employment and protect governmental programs, services, and interests.3 The ruling below threatens the ability of Tribes to adopt and enforce those laws. As such, this case implicates the self-government rights and sovereign interests of amici Tribes and USET member Tribes.
Amici share a strong interest in this case because of the sweeping impact its resolution could have on their ability (or the *2 ability of their member Tribes) to exercise civil adjudicative jurisdiction over nonmembers on tribal lands. Amici’s interest in maintaining such jurisdiction stems from their interests in tribal self-government and the protection of their members and territories; in the maintenance and enforcement of civil law and order on tribal lands; and in ensuring that justice and the protection of the law are extended to all persons on reservation lands.
The State of Alabama (the “State”) seeks to collaterally attack the trust status of lands that have been held in trust by the United States for the Poarch Band of Creek Indians (the “Tribe”) pursuant to the Indian Reorganization Act (the “IRA”) for over nine and up to 20 years. USET agrees with the Tribe that the claims made by the State cannot be raised in this case and in this forum, and were properly dismissed by the District Court.
Amicus Brief FILED: Harrison Family v PCI Gaming May 13, 2014 While USET and NCAI take no position on the underlying merits of the dispute at issue in this case, their member tribes have a strong common interest in opposing Appellant Harrison’s attempt to collaterally attack the very existence of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in an effort to overcome the doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity from suit.
THE CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE GRAND RONDE COMMUNITY OF OREGON, and Clark County, Washington, et al., Plaintiffs, v. S.M.R. JEWELL, in her official capacity as Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, et al., Defendants, and COWLITZ INDIAN TRIBE, Intervenor-Defendant.
USET Jamestown Amicus Brief Submitted November 6, 2013 For the amici, the reacquisition and rebuilding of their homelands is of critical importance to achieving their goal of economic self-sufficiency as self-governing entities. The revenues generated from economic development enterprises on trust and reservation lands provide each tribe with the ability to strengthen its tribal government, improve the quality of life of its members and provide capital for other economic development and investment opportunities.
Whether a federal court has jurisdiction to enjoin activity that violates the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (“IGRA”) but takes place outside of Indian lands.
2. Whether tribal sovereign immunity bars a state from suing in federal court to enjoin a tribe from violating IGRA outside of Indian lands.
Amicus Brief Filed in Supreme Court in ICWA Case – USET March 27, 2013 As federally recognized Tribes and Indian or tribal organizations, amici have extensive knowledge and experience with regard to the operation of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). In particular, amici have first-hand knowledge of ICWA’s importance in protecting Indian children’s citizenship ties to their Tribes. The realization and protection of these citizenship ties is critical both to tribal self-governance and to the full exercise of the rights and responsibilities available to Indian children eligible for tribal citizenship. Accordingly, amici have a strong interest in ensuring the proper and constitutional interpretation of ICWA as legislation protecting tribal citizenship.
importance for achieving their goal of economic self-sufficiency as self-governing entities. The revenues generated from economic development enterprises on trust and reservation lands provide each tribe with the ability to strengthen its tribal government, improve the quality of life of its members and provide capital for other economic development and investment opportunities.
The 449 tribes across the nation who are amici or members of amici tribal organizations represented on this brief are direct beneficiaries of several Indian-specific provisions included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Act” or “ACA”)2 that have a purpose and genesis separate and distinct from the minimum coverage provision that the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals declared unconstitutional but severable from remaining provisions of the Act.3 The Indian-specific provisions of the ACA are legally separable from the remainder of the Act, because they solely relate to the Federal responsibility to provide health care to Indian tribes and their members, and are of critical importance to the delivery of health care services to Indian tribes and their members throughout the country.
The close to 350 tribes across the nation who are amici or members of amici tribal organizations represented on this brief are directly affected by the district court’s decision to invalidate the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Acf or “ACA”) in its entirety, including several Indian-specific provisions that have a separate purpose and genesis from the individual mandate declared unconstitutional by the court. These Indian-specific provisions are legally separable from the remainder of the Act, are related solely to the Federal responsibility to provide health care to Indian tribes and their members, and are of critical importance to the delivery of health care services to Indian tribes and their members throughout the country. If this Court reaches the question of severability, the amici have a strong interest in ensuring that the analysis includes a thoughtful consideration of the severability rules as applied to these separate and separable Indian-specific provisions of the Act.

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