Source: http://openjurist.org/533/us/353/nevadas-v-floyd-hicks
Timestamp: 2015-01-30 17:14:56
Document Index: 473243684

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1983', '§1983', '§ 1441', '§501', '§ 1983', '§ 1162', '§ 2804', '§ 2806', '§1983', '§1983', '§ 1911', '§ 1715', '§1983', '§ 1441', '§1983', '§1983', '§1441', '§ 2210', '§1441', '§ 2210', '§1441', '§1983']

533 US 353 Nevadas v. Floyd Hicks | OpenJurist
533 U.S. 353 - Nevadas v. Floyd Hicks	Home533 us 353 nevadas v. floyd hicks
533 US 353 Nevadas v. Floyd Hicks 533 U.S. 353121 S.Ct. 2304150 L.Ed. 2d 398
NEVADA, et al., PETITIONERSv.FLOYD HICKS, et al.
June 25, 2001Argued March 21, 2001
1. The Tribal Court did not have jurisdiction to adjudicate the wardens' alleged tortious conduct in executing a search warrant for an off-reservation crime. Pp. 3-12.
(b) The rule that, where nonmembers are concerned, "the exercise of tribal power beyond what is necessary to protect tribal self-government or to control internal relations cannot survive without express congressional delegation," Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544, 564, applies to both Indian and non-Indian land. The land's ownership status is only one factor to be considered, and while that factor may sometimes be dispositive, tribal ownership is not alone enough to support regulatory jurisdiction over nonmembers. Pp. 4-6.
(d) Congress has not stripped the States of their inherent jurisdiction on reservations with regard to off-reservation violations of state law. The federal statutory scheme neither prescribes nor suggests that state officers cannot enter a reservation to investigate or prosecute such violations. Pp. 11-12.
2. The Tribal Court had no jurisdiction over the §1983 claims. Tribal courts are not courts of "general jurisdiction." The historical and constitutional assumption of concurrent state-court jurisdiction over cases involving federal statutes is missing with respect to tribal courts, and their inherent adjudicative jurisdiction over nonmembers is at most only as broad as their legislative jurisdiction. Congress has not purported to grant tribal courts jurisdiction over §1983 claims, and such jurisdiction would create serious anomalies under 28 U.S.C. § 1441. Pp. 12-15.
4. Various arguments to the contrary lack merit. Pp. 16-21.196 F.3d 1020, reversed and remanded.
Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined.
* Respondent Hicks1 is one of about 900 members of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribes of western Nevada. He resides on the Tribes' reservation of approximately 8000 acres, established by federal statute in 1908, ch. 53, 35 Stat. 85. In 1990 Hicks came under suspicion of having killed, off the reservation, a California bighorn sheep, a gross misdemeanor under Nevada law, see Nev. Rev. Stat. §501.376 (1999). A state game warden obtained from state court a search warrant "SUBJECT TO OBTAINING APPROVAL FROM THE FALLON TRIBAL COURT IN AND FOR THE FALLON PAIUTE-SHOSHONE TRIBES." According to the issuing judge, this tribal-court authorization was necessary because "[t]his Court has no jurisdiction on the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Indian Reservation." App. G to Pet. for Cert. 1. A search warrant was obtained from the tribal court, and the warden, accompanied by a tribal police officer, searched respondent's yard, uncovering only the head of a Rocky Mountain bighorn, a different (and unprotected) species of sheep.
Respondent, claiming that his sheep-heads had been damaged, and that the second search exceeded the bounds of the warrant, brought suit against the Tribal Judge, the tribal officers, the state wardens in their individual and official capacities, and the State of Nevada in the Tribal Court in and for the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribes. (His claims against all defendants except the state wardens and the State of Nevada were dismissed by directed verdict and are not at issue here.) Respondent's causes of action included trespass to land and chattels, abuse of process, and violation of civil rights specifically, denial of equal protection, denial of due process, and unreasonable search and seizure, each remediable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See App. 8-21, 25-29. Respondent later voluntarily dismissed his case against the State and against the state officials in their official capacities, leaving only his suit against those officials in their individual capacities. See id., at 32-35.
* The principle of Indian law central to this aspect of the case is our holding in Strate v. A-1 Contractors, 520 U.S. 438, 453 (1997): "As to nonmembers a tribe's adjudicative jurisdiction does not exceed its legislative jurisdiction ." That formulation leaves open the question whether a tribe's adjudicative jurisdiction over nonmember defendants equals its legislative jurisdiction.2 We will not have to answer that open question if we determine that the Tribes in any event lack legislative jurisdiction in this case. We first inquire, therefore, whether the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribes either as an exercise of their inherent sovereignty, or under grant of federal authority can regulate state wardens executing a search warrant for evidence of an off-reservation crime.
Indian tribes' regulatory authority over nonmembers is governed by the principles set forth in Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544 (1981), which we have called the "pathmarking case" on the subject, Strate, supra, at 445. In deciding whether the Crow Tribe could regulate hunting and fishing by nonmembers on land held in fee simple by nonmembers, Montana observed that, under our decision in Oliphant v. Suquamish Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978), tribes lack criminal jurisdiction over nonmembers. Although, it continued, "Oliphant only determined inherent tribal authority in criminal matters, the principles on which it relied support the general proposition that the inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe." 450 U.S., at 565 (footnote omitted). Where nonmembers are concerned, the "exercise of tribal power beyond what is necessary to protect tribal self-government or to control internal relations is inconsistent with the dependent status of the tribes, and so cannot survive without express congressional delegation." Id., at 564 (emphasis added).3
Both Montana and Strate rejected tribal authority to regulate nonmembers' activities on land over which the tribe could not "assert a landowner's right to occupy and exclude," Strate, supra, at 456; Montana, supra, at 557, 564. Respondents and the United States argue that since Hicks's home and yard are on tribe-owned land within the reservation, the Tribe may make its exercise of regulatory authority over nonmembers a condition of nonmembers' entry. Not necessarily. While it is certainly true that the non-Indian ownership status of the land was central to the analysis in both Montana and Strate, the reason that was so was not that Indian ownership suspends the "general proposition" derived from Oliphant that "the inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe" except to the extent "necessary to protect tribal self-government or to control internal relations." 450 U.S., at 564-565. Oliphant itself drew no distinctions based on the status of land. And Montana, after announcing the general rule of no jurisdiction over nonmembers, cautioned that "[t]o be sure, Indian tribes retain inherent sovereign power to exercise some forms of civil jurisdiction over non-Indians on their reservations, even on non-Indian fee lands," 450 U.S., at 565 clearly implying that the general rule of Montana applies to both Indian and non-Indian land. The ownership status of land, in other words, is only one factor to consider in determining whether regulation of the activities of nonmembers is "necessary to protect tribal self-government or to control internal relations." It may sometimes be a dispositive factor. Hitherto, the absence of tribal ownership has been virtually conclusive of the absence of tribal civil jurisdiction; with one minor exception, we have never upheld under Montana the extension of tribal civil authority over nonmembers on non-Indian land. Compare, e.g., Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe, 455 U.S. 130, 137, 142 (1982) (tribe has taxing authority over tribal lands leased by nonmembers), with Atkinson Trading Co. v. Shirley, 532 U.S. ___ (2001) (slip op. at 13) (tribe has no taxing authority over nonmembers' activities on land held by nonmembers in fee); but see Brendale v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 492 U.S. 408, 443-444, 458-459 (1989) (opinions of Stevens, J., and Blackmun, J.) (tribe can impose zoning regulation on that 3.1% of land within reservation area closed to public entry that was not owned by the tribe). But the existence of tribal ownership is not alone enough to support regulatory jurisdiction over nonmembers.
In Strate, we explained that what is necessary to protect tribal self-government and control internal relations can be understood by looking at the examples of tribal power to which Montana referred: tribes have authority "[to punish tribal offenders,] to determine tribal membership, to regulate domestic relations among members, and to prescribe rules of inheritance for members," 520 U.S., at 459 (brackets in original), quoting Montana, supra, at 564. These examples show, we said, that Indians have " 'the right to make their own laws and be ruled by them,' " 520 U.S., at 459, quoting Williams v. Lee, 358 U.S. 217, 220 (1959). See also Fisher v. District Court of Sixteenth Judicial Dist. of Mont., 424 U.S. 382, 386 (1976) (per curiam) ("In litigation between Indians and non-Indians arising out of conduct on an Indian reservation, resolution of conflicts between the jurisdiction of state and tribal courts has depended, absent a governing Act of Congress, on whether the state action infringed on the right of reservation Indians to make their own laws and be ruled by them" (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)). Tribal assertion of regulatory authority over nonmembers must be connected to that right of the Indians to make their own laws and be governed by them. See Merrion, supra, at 137, 142 ("The power to tax is an essential attribute of Indian sovereignty because it is a necessary instrument of self-government," at least as to "tribal lands" on which the tribe "has authority over a nonmember").
Our cases make clear that the Indians' right to make their own laws and be governed by them does not exclude all state regulatory authority on the reservation. State sovereignty does not end at a reservation's border. Though tribes are often referred to as "sovereign" entities, it was "long ago" that "the Court departed from Chief Justice Marshall's view that 'the laws of [a State] can have no force' within reservation boundaries. Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515, 561 (1832)," White Mountain Apache Tribe v. Bracker, 448 U.S. 136, 141 (1980).4 "Ordinarily," it is now clear, "an Indian reservation is considered part of the territory of the State." U.S. Dept. of Interior, Federal Indian Law 510, and n. 1 (1958), citing Utah & Northern R. Co. v. Fisher, 116 U.S. 28 (1885); see also Organized Village of Kake v. Egan, 369 U.S. 60, 72 (1962).
That is not to say that States may exert the same degree of regulatory authority within a reservation as they do without. To the contrary, the principle that Indians have the right to make their own laws and be governed by them requires "an accommodation between the interests of the Tribes and the Federal Government, on the one hand, and those of the State, on the other." Washington v. Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation, 447 U.S. 134, 156 (1980); see also id., at 181 (opinion of Rehnquist, J.). "When on-reservation conduct involving only Indians is at issue, state law is generally inapplicable, for the State's regulatory interest is likely to be minimal and the federal interest in encouraging tribal self-government is at its strongest." Bracker, supra, at 144. When, however, state interests outside the reservation are implicated, States may regulate the activities even of tribe members on tribal land, as exemplified by our decision in Confederated Tribes. In that case, Indians were selling cigarettes on their reservation to nonmembers from off-reservation, without collecting the state cigarette tax. We held that the State could require the Tribes to collect the tax from nonmembers, and could "impose at least 'minimal' burdens on the Indian retailer to aid in enforcing and collecting the tax," 447 U.S., at 151. It is also well established in our precedent that States have criminal jurisdiction over reservation Indians for crimes committed (as was the alleged poaching in this case) off the reservation. See Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones, 411 U.S. 145, 148-149 (1973).
While it is not entirely clear from our precedent whether the last mentioned authority entails the corollary right to enter a reservation (including Indian-fee lands) for enforcement purposes, several of our opinions point in that direction. In Confederated Tribes, we explicitly reserved the question whether state officials could seize cigarettes held for sale to nonmembers in order to recover the taxes due. See 447 U.S., at 162. In Utah & Northern R. Co., however, we observed that "[i]t has been held that process of [state] courts may run into an Indian reservation of this kind, where the subject-matter or controversy is otherwise within their cognizance," 116 U.S., at 31.5 Shortly thereafter, we considered, in United States v. Kagama, 118 U.S. 375 (1886), whether Congress could enact a law giving federal courts jurisdiction over various common-law, violent crimes committed by Indians on a reservation within a State. We expressed skepticism that the Indian Commerce Clause could justify this assertion of authority in derogation of state jurisdiction, but ultimately accepted the argument that the law
The Court's references to "process" in Utah & Northern R. Co. and Kagama, and the Court's concern in Kagama over possible federal encroachment on state prerogatives, suggest state authority to issue search warrants in cases such as the one before us. ("Process" is defined as "any means used by a court to acquire or exercise its jurisdiction over a person or over specific property," Black's Law Dictionary 1084 (5th ed. 1979), and is equated in criminal cases with a warrant, id., at 1085.) It is noteworthy that Kagama recognized the right of state laws to "operat[e] upon [non-Indians] found" within a reservation, but did not similarly limit to non-Indians or the property of non-Indians the scope of the process of state courts. This makes perfect sense, since, as we explained in the context of federal enclaves, the reservation of state authority to serve process is necessary to "prevent [such areas] from becoming an asylum for fugitives from justice." Fort Leavenworth R. Co. v. Lowe, 114 U.S. 525, 533 (1885).6
We conclude today, in accordance with these prior statements, that tribal authority to regulate state officers in executing process related to the violation, off reservation, of state laws is not essential to tribal self-government or internal relations to "the right to make laws and be ruled by them." The State's interest in execution of process is considerable, and even when it relates to Indian-fee lands it no more impairs the tribe's self-government than federal enforcement of federal law impairs state government. Respondents argue that, even conceding the State's general interest in enforcing its off-reservation poaching law on the reservation, Nevada's interest in this suit is minimal, because it is a suit against state officials in their individual capacities. We think, however, that the distinction between individual and official capacity suits is irrelevant. To paraphrase our opinion in Tennessee v. Davis, 100 U.S. 257, 263 (1880), which upheld a federal statute permitting federal officers to remove to federal court state criminal proceedings brought against them for their official actions, a State "can act only through its officers and agents," and if a tribe can "affix penalties to acts done under the immediate direction of the [state] government, and in obedience to its laws," "the operations of the [state] government may at any time be arrested at the will of the [tribe]." Cf. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 638 (1987) ("Permitting damages suits against government officials can entail substantial social costs, including the risk that fear of personal monetary liability and harassing litigation will unduly inhibit officials in the discharge of their duties").
The States' inherent jurisdiction on reservations can of course be stripped by Congress, see Draper v. United States, 164 U.S. 240, 242-243 (1896). But with regard to the jurisdiction at issue here that has not occurred. The Government's assertion that "[a]s a general matter, although state officials have jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute crimes on a reservation that exclusively involve non-Indians, . . . they do not have jurisdiction with respect to crimes involving Indian perpetrators or Indian victims," Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 12-13, n. 7, is misleading. The statutes upon which it relies, see id., at 18-19 show that the last half of the statement, like the first, is limited to "crimes on a reservation." Sections 1152 and 1153 of Title 18, which give United States and tribal criminal law generally exclusive application, apply only to crimes committed in Indian Country; Public Law 280, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1162 which permits some state jurisdiction as an exception to this rule, is similarly limited. And 25 U.S.C. § 2804 which permits federal-state agreements enabling state law-enforcement agents to act on reservations, applies only to deputizing them for the enforcement of federal or tribal criminal law. Nothing in the federal statutory scheme prescribes, or even remotely suggests, that state officers cannot enter a reservation (including Indian-fee land) to investigate or prosecute violations of state law occurring off the reservation. To the contrary, 25 U.S.C. § 2806 affirms that "the provisions of this chapter alter neither . . . the law enforcement, investigative, or judicial authority of any . . . State, or political subdivision or agency thereof . . . ."
We turn next to the contention of respondent and the Government that the tribal court, as a court of general jurisdiction, has authority to entertain federal claims under §1983.(FN7 It is certainly true that state courts of "general jurisdiction" can adjudicate cases invoking federal statutes, such as §1983, absent congressional specification to the contrary. "Under [our] system of dual sovereignty, we have consistently held that state courts have inherent authority, and are thus presumptively competent, to adjudicate claims arising under the laws of the United States," Tafflin v. Levitt, 493 U.S. 455, 458 (1990). That this would be the case was assumed by the Framers, see The Federalist No. 82, pp. 492-493 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). Indeed, that state courts could enforce federal law is presumed by Article III of the Constitution, which leaves to Congress the decision whether to create lower federal courts at all. This historical and constitutional assumption of concurrent state-court jurisdiction over federal-law cases is completely missing with respect to tribal courts.
Respondents' contention that tribal courts are courts of "general jurisdiction" is also quite wrong. A state court's jurisdiction is general, in that it "lays hold of all subjects of litigation between parties within its jurisdiction, though the causes of dispute are relative to the laws of the most distant part of the globe." Id., at 493. Tribal courts, it should be clear, cannot be courts of general jurisdiction in this sense, for a tribe's inherent adjudicative jurisdiction over nonmembers is at most only as broad as its legislative jurisdiction. See supra, at 3-4.(FN8 It is true that some statutes proclaim tribal-court jurisdiction over certain questions of federal law. See, e.g., 25 U.S.C. § 1911(a) (authority to adjudicate child custody disputes under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978); 12 U.S.C. § 1715z-13(g)(5) (jurisdiction over mortgage foreclosure actions brought by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development against reservation homeowners). But no provision in federal law provides for tribal-court jurisdiction over §1983 actions.
Furthermore, tribal-court jurisdiction would create serious anomalies, as the Government recognizes, because the general federal-question removal statute refers only to removal from state court, see 28 U.S.C. § 1441. Were §1983 claims cognizable in tribal court, defendants would inexplicably lack the right available to state-court §1983 defendants to seek a federal forum. The Government thinks the omission of reference to tribal courts in §1441 unproblematic. Since, it argues, "[i]t is doubtful . . . that Congress intended to deny tribal court defendants the right given state court defendants to elect a federal forum for the adjudication of causes of action under federal law," we should feel free to create that right by permitting the tribal-court defendant to obtain a federal-court injunction against the action, effectively forcing it to be refiled in federal court. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 25-26. The sole support for devising this extraordinary remedy is El Paso Natural Gas Co. v. Neztsosie, 526 U.S. 473 (1999), where we approved a similar procedure with regard to claims under the Price-Anderson Act brought in tribal court. In Neztsosie, however, the claims were not initially federal claims, but Navajo tort claims that the Price-Anderson Act provided "shall be deemed to be . . . action[s] arising under"42 U.S.C. § 2210; there was little doubt that the tribal court had jurisdiction over such tort claims, see id., at 482, n. 4. And for the propriety of the injunction in Neztsosie, we relied not on §1441, but on the removal provision of the Price-Anderson Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2210(n)(2). Although, like §1441, that provision referred only to removal from state courts, in light of the Act's detailed and distinctive provisions for the handling of "nuclear incident" cases in federal court, see 526 U.S., at 486, we thought it clear Congress envisioned the defendant's ability to get into federal court in all instances. Not only are there missing here any distinctive federal-court procedures, but in order even to confront the question whether an unspecified removal power exists, we must first attribute to tribal courts jurisdiction that is not apparent. Surely the simpler way to avoid the removal problem is to conclude (as other indications suggest anyway) that tribal courts cannot entertain §1983 suits.
The last question before us is whether petitioners were required to exhaust their jurisdictional claims in Tribal Court before bringing them in Federal District Court. See National Farmers Union Ins. Cos. v. Crow Tribe, 471 U.S. 845, 856-857 (1985). In National Farmers Union we recognized exceptions to the exhaustion requirement, where "an assertion of tribal jurisdiction is motivated by a desire to harass or is conducted in bad faith, . . . or where the action is patently violative of express jurisdictional prohibitions, or where exhaustion would be futile because of the lack of an adequate opportunity to challenge the court's jurisdiction," id., at 856, n. 21 (internal quotation marks omitted). None of these exceptions seems applicable to this case, but we added a broader exception in Strate: "[w]hen . . . it is plain that no federal grant provides for tribal governance of nonmembers' conduct on land covered by Montana's main rule," so the exhaustion requirement "would serve no purpose other than delay." 520 U.S., at 459-460, and n. 14. Though this exception too is technically inapplicable, the reasoning behind it is not. Since it is clear, as we have discussed, that tribal courts lack jurisdiction over state officials for causes of action relating to their performance of official duties, adherence to the tribal exhaustion requirement in such cases "would serve no purpose other than delay," and is therefore unnecessary.
Finally, a few words in response to the concurring opinion of Justice O'Connor, which is in large part a dissent from the views expressed in this opinion.9
The principal point of the concurrence is that our reasoning "gives only passing consideration to the fact that the state officials' activities in this case occurred on land owned and controlled by the Tribe," post, at 6. According to Justice O'Connor, "that factor is not prominent in the Court's analysis," post, at 9. Even a cursory reading of our opinion demonstrates that this is not so. To the contrary, we acknowledge that tribal ownership is a factor in the Montana analysis, and a factor significant enough that it "may sometimes be . . . dispositive," supra, at 6. We simply do not find it dispositive in the present case, when weighed against the State's interest in pursuing off-reservation violations of its laws. See supra, at 10 (concluding that "[t]he State's interest in execution of process is considerable" enough to outweigh the tribal interest in self-government "even when it relates to Indian-fee lands"). The concurrence is of course free to disagree with this judgment; but to say that failure to give tribal ownership determinative effect "fails to consider adequately the Tribe's inherent sovereign interests in activities on their land," post, at 16 (opinion of O'Connor, J.), is an exaggeration.
The concurrence marshals no authority and scant reasoning to support its judgment that tribal authority over state officers pursuing, on tribe-owned land, off-reservation violations of state law may be "necessary to protect tribal self-government or to control internal relations." Montana, 450 U.S., at 564-565. Se