Opinion ID: 220729
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Did the district court have jurisdiction?

Text: Newell, joined by Parisi, first contends that counts 1, 2, 29 and 30 fall outside the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Essentially, the appellants argue that the Passamaquoddy Tribe has negotiated agreements with the state of Maine and the federal government granting them exclusive jurisdiction over internal tribal matters, and that the conduct charged in counts 1, 2, 29 and 30 should be understood as such. We note that the parties appear to have conflicting understandings of the nature of the claim being raised. The government appears to construe the claim as one of tribal sovereign immunity, and contends that Parisi, at least, has waived any such claim. Parisi, for his part, insists that the argument instead concerns our subject matter jurisdiction, and hence avoids the [o]rdinary raise-or-waive rules which the government seeks to enforce against him. See Caban Hernandez v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 486 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.2007). [8] As we have noted, an objection to subject matter jurisdiction is not waivable and may be raised for the first time on appeal. F.A.C., Inc. v. Cooperativa de Seguros de Vida de Puerto Rico, 449 F.3d 185, 189 (1st Cir.2006). Even if the same claims were presented below as a sovereign immunity defense, this does not preclude the defendants from appealing to them, now, to challenge our jurisdiction. Our review is de novo. Miller v. Nichols, 586 F.3d 53, 58-59 (1st Cir.2009) (The existence of federal subject matter jurisdiction . . . [is a] question[] of law, subject to de novo review in this court.). Relations between the Tribe and the state and federal government are governed by an agreement that the parties arrived at after the Passamaquoddy filed suit in the 1970s, asserting claims to nearly two-thirds of Maine's land mass. The Tribe and the state of Maine eventually reached a settlement, in which the Tribe in many respects gained the powers of a municipality under Maine law. Akins v. Penobscot Nation, 130 F.3d 482, 484 (1st Cir.1997). The settlement granted the Tribe recognition under federal law as a tribe, as well as entitlement to a portion of the income from an $81.5 million settlement fund established by Congress. See 25 U.S.C. §§ 1723-24. In exchange, the Tribe's claims to Maine's territory were extinguished, and the Tribe agreed that with very limited exceptions, it was subject to the laws of Maine. Akins, 130 F.3d at 485; see also Penobscot Nation v. Fellencer, 164 F.3d 706, 708 (1st Cir.1999) (noting that Maine was permitted to extend its jurisdiction over the Nation to a greater degree than most states exercise over other Indian Tribes). The agreement between the Tribe and the state of Maine was memorialized in the Act to Implement the Maine Indian Claims Settlement, 30 M.R.S.A. §§ 6201-14 (the Implementing Act). The Implementing Act was subsequently ratified by Congress in the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, at 25 U.S.C. §§ 1721-35 (the Settlement Act). Section 6206 of the Implementing Act states, in material part, that internal tribal matters, including . . . tribal organization, tribal government, tribal elections and the use or disposition of settlement fund income shall not be subject to regulation by the State. 30 M.R.S.A. § 6206. This limitation on state jurisdiction was incorporated into the federal Settlement Act by reference. See 25 U.S.C. § 1725(f) (The Passamaquoddy Tribe . . . [is] hereby authorized to exercise jurisdiction, separate and distinct from the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the State of Maine, to the extent authorized by the Maine Implementing Act, and any subsequent amendments thereto.). We have interpreted the Settlement Act to interpose a bar to federal jurisdiction over internal tribal matters. See Akins, 130 F.3d at 485 ([T]he Nation in certain capacities functions as a municipality of Maine and is reachable under state and federal law in that capacity, but when it functions as a tribe as to internal tribal matters, it is not.). The operative question is, accordingly, whether the conduct alleged in counts 1, 2, 29 and 30 constitute internal tribal matters. Newell's argument is that the government's attempt to enforce 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(A) against him reaches internal tribal matters because the allocation of tribal money amongst tribal accounts only affects tribal members, not nonmembers and concerns only matters of tribal organization, tribal government, and the use or disposition of settlement fund income. [9] He argues that [f]ederal jurisdiction over these allegations would be contrary to the purpose of the Settlement Acts, which is to allow the Tribe to handle internal tribal matters, particularly internal government matters. Not surprisingly, Newell neglects to mention that Congress specifically exempted the Tribe from several federal criminal statutes in the Settlement Actbut that § 666 is not one of those exempted. See 25 U.S.C. § 1725(c). Indeed, Congress specifically included Indian Tribes within the ambit of § 666(a), which explicitly applies to agents of Indian tribal government. These observations suggest that assertion of federal jurisdiction over counts 1, 2, 29 and 30 was not improper. [10] Although tribes generally retain the right to self-government, [they] are nonetheless subject to federal criminal jurisdiction of both a specified and more general nature. United States v. Boots, 80 F.3d 580, 593 (1st Cir.1996) (internal citations omitted). In Boots, the defendants were accused, inter alia, of defrauding the Passamaquoddy Reservation of the honest services of their police chief by attempting to bribe him. One of the defendants claimed that he should have been acquitted in deference to tribal sovereignty. Id. at 592. We rejected this claim, noting that the violations he was charged with are not specific to Native Americans, but rather are of general applicability, and that even if such crimes may involve `an independent federal interest to be protected,' . . . it is unclear that one is required. Id. at 593 (internal citations omitted). Conspiring to defraud the United States and misapplying federal funds are, like the crimes defined by the wire fraud statute at issue in Boots, crimes of general applicability. Therefore, even were we to accept Newell's claim that there is no federal interest in how the Tribe transfers its money between its accounts, it is not clear that any peculiarly federal interest is in fact required for such a statute to apply to the Tribe. Id., 80 F.3d at 593. Moreover, a less tendentious description of Newell's conduct would in any case suggest that there may well be a relevant federal interest, viz. an interest in ensuring that federal grants and contracts are spent in the way the government intends them to be spent. As the Supreme Court has held, when federal agencies spend taxpayer dollars, Congress has an interest in ensuring that this money is not frittered away in graft or on projects undermined when funds are siphoned off. Sabri v. United States, 541 U.S. 600, 605, 124 S.Ct. 1941, 158 L.Ed.2d 891 (2004) (rejecting claim that § 666(a)(2)the anti-bribery portion of the statute at issue hererequired proof of a nexus between the federal funds received and the alleged bribe). When money can be drained off here because a federal grant is pouring in there . . . [i]t is certainly enough that the statutes condition the offense on a threshold amount of federal dollars defining the federal interest. Id. at 606, 124 S.Ct. 1941. Congress presumably agreed that there was such an interest when it made § 666(a) explicitly applicable to Indian tribal governments. Moreover, despite rather mysterious invocations of tribal self-governance, Newell has not managed to explain how holding him, qua governor of a Tribe that received millions of dollars a year in federal financial assistance, criminally responsible for extensive misuse of federal funds would interfere with a right integral to self-government. Boots, 80 F.3d at 593. Finally, in Akins, a case about a tribe's timber harvesting policies, we emphasized five factors that were strong considerations to take into account in deciding whether a dispute about tribal practices constitutes an internal tribal matter. Akins, 130 F.3d at 486-87. These factors are (1) whether the practice in question purports to regulate only members of the tribe, or if the interests of non-members are at issue; (2) whether it regulates the very land that defines the territory of the Nation; (3) whether it concerns the use of a natural resource derived from the land; (4) whether it implicate[s] or impair[s] any interest of the state of Maine; and (5) whether construing the challenged practice as an internal tribal matter is consistent with prior legal understandings. Id. at 486-87. Applying these factors to the current case reveals the following. First, the interests of non-membersat the very least, those of the federal agencies in ensuring that the funds they award are properly spentare clearly implicated. Second, the funds at issue include state funds (count 10 alleged misuse of state Medicaid funds). Finally, as our discussion has just indicated, prior legal understandings support our finding that the challenged conduct does not constitute an internal tribal matter. [11] Because the conduct alleged in counts 1, 2, 29 and 30 involves mismanagement of federal grants and contracts, which are subject to regulations that the Tribe is not free to ignore, we hold that the conduct alleged in these counts do not constitute internal tribal matters. We emphasize that the case before us rests on malfeasance involving federal grant money, in which the federal interest is clear. It would be a different case if the counts attempted to apply § 666 to mismanagement of settlement fund income. We express no opinion as to whether such a prosecution would or would not implicate the internal tribal matters exception to federal jurisdiction under the Implementing and Settlement Acts.