Opinion ID: 2844076
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Scope of Immunity

Text: Federal courts have long recognized that state officials are immune from state law claims brought against them in their official capacity because the Ex parte Young doctrine does not reach such claims. See Nat’l Ass’n of Bds. of Pharmacy v. Bd. of Regents of the Univ. Sys. of Ga., 633 F.3d 1297, 1305 n.15 (11th Cir. 2011). The Supreme Court has explained that the rationale for the Ex parte Young doctrine “rests on the need to promote the vindication of federal rights,” but in a case alleging that a state official has violated state law, this federal interest “disappears.” Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 105-06 (1984). State officials are immune from suit in federal court for claims arising under state law because “it is difficult to think of a greater intrusion on state sovereignty than when a federal court instructs state officials on how to conform their conduct to state law.” Id. at 106. 18 Case: 14-12004 Date Filed: 09/03/2015 Page: 19 of 42 The immunity tribal officials enjoy from state law claims brought in federal court is narrower than the immunity of state officials from such claims, however. Specifically, tribal officials may be subject to suit in federal court for violations of state law under the fiction of Ex parte Young when their conduct occurs outside of Indian lands. See Bay Mills, 134 S. Ct. at 2034-35. In Bay Mills, the Supreme Court held that a tribe enjoyed immunity from suit by a state to enjoin alleged illegal gaming occurring at a casino that was not on Indian lands. However, the state had other remedies and could sue “tribal officials . . . (rather than the Tribe itself) seeking an injunction for, say, gambling without a license [under state law].” Id. at 2035 (emphasis added). This is because “a State, on its own lands, has many other powers over tribal gaming that it does not possess (absent consent) in Indian territory”; when not on Indian lands, members of a tribe, including tribal officials, “are subject to any generally applicable state law.” Id. at 2034-35. And tribal officials are not immune from a state law claim seeking to enjoin gaming because “analogizing to Ex parte Young, tribal immunity does not bar such a suit for injunctive relief against individuals, including tribal officers, responsible for unlawful conduct” under state law that occurs off Indian lands. Id. at 2035 (internal citation omitted). Alabama acknowledges that the Individual Defendants enjoy immunity from its state law claim if the casinos are located on Indian lands. While conceding that 19 Case: 14-12004 Date Filed: 09/03/2015 Page: 20 of 42 the Secretary took the lands where the casinos are located into trust for the Tribe, Alabama argues that under the Supreme Court’s decision in Carcieri v. Salazar, 555 U.S. 379 (2009), the Tribe’s casinos are not located on Indian lands because the Secretary lacked authority to take land into trust on behalf of the Tribe under IRA. We reject this argument because Alabama cannot raise a collateral challenge to the Secretary’s authority to take lands into trust (and consequently, the status of the Tribe’s lands) in this lawsuit. We therefore conclude that the Individual Defendants are entitled to immunity on Alabama’s state law claim. In Carcieri, the Secretary decided to take a parcel of land into trust for the Narragansett Indian tribe. Rhode Island appealed the decision to the Interior Board of Indian Appeals, which upheld the Secretary’s decision. Rhode Island then sought review of the agency action in federal court under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. § 702. The Supreme Court was presented with the question of whether IRA authorized the Secretary to take lands into trust on behalf of the Narragansett tribe, which had not been federally recognized when IRA was enacted in 1934. As described above, IRA authorized the Secretary to take lands into trust “for the purpose of providing land for Indians,” defining Indians as “persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized Indian tribe now under Federal jurisdiction.” 25 U.S.C. §§ 465, 479. Because “the term ‘now under federal jurisdiction’ in § 479 unambiguously refer[red] to those tribes 20 Case: 14-12004 Date Filed: 09/03/2015 Page: 21 of 42 that were under the federal jurisdiction of the United States when [] IRA was enacted in 1934,” the Supreme Court held the Secretary lacked authority to take land into trust for a tribe that was not under federal jurisdiction in 1934. 555 U.S. at 395-96. But the Supreme Court’s decision in Carcieri holding that the Secretary lacked authority to take land into trust for the Narragansett tribe in a lawsuit against the Secretary raising a timely APA claim does not mean that Alabama may collaterally attack the Secretary’s authority to take lands into trust for the Tribe in this case. Unlike Rhode Island in Carcieri, Alabama has not brought an APA claim against the Secretary. Because Carcieri involved a timely challenge under the APA, the Supreme Court did not address whether the Secretary’s authority to take land into trust may be reviewed outside an APA action.20 The proper vehicle for Alabama to challenge the Secretary’s decisions to take land into trust for the Tribe is an APA claim. See Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians v. Patchak, 132 S. Ct. 2199, 2208 (2012) (characterizing a challenge to the Secretary’s land-into-trust decision as a “gardenvariety APA claim”). We hold that Alabama cannot raise in this lawsuit a collateral challenge to the Secretary’s authority to take the lands at issue into trust. 20 The Supreme Court explained that its decision did not address the status of lands the Secretary had previously taken into trust for the Narragansett tribe. Carcieri, 555 U.S. at 385 n.3. 21 Case: 14-12004 Date Filed: 09/03/2015 Page: 22 of 42 We find persuasive the opinion of the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc, which recently held that California could not raise a collateral attack—that is, make a challenge outside an APA claim—to the Secretary’s authority to take lands into trust for an Indian tribe. Big Lagoon Rancheria v. California, 789 F.3d 947 (9th Cir. 2015) (en banc). In Big Lagoon, a tribe sued California contending that the state had failed to negotiate in good faith a tribal-state compact governing class III gaming. Id. at 952. California argued, based on Carcieri, that it had no obligation to negotiate a compact because the tribe was not under federal jurisdiction as of 1934; thus, the tribe’s casinos were not located on Indian lands. Id. The Ninth Circuit rejected California’s reliance on Carcieri, which did not “address whether the [Secretary’s] entrustment decisions can be challenged outside an action brought under the APA or outside the statute of limitations for APA actions.” Id. at 953. The Ninth Circuit explained that California raised “a belated collateral attack” on the Secretary’s decision to take land into trust, which could only be reviewed under “a petition for review pursuant to the APA.” Id. Perhaps tacitly recognizing that we can review the Secretary’s authority to take lands into trust only under the APA, Alabama argues the district court should have permitted it to amend its complaint to add the Secretary as a party and assert an APA claim. Even assuming, arguendo, that Alabama properly sought leave from the district court to amend its complaint to add an APA claim against the 22 Case: 14-12004 Date Filed: 09/03/2015 Page: 23 of 42 Secretary, 21 we cannot say that the district court abused its discretion when it denied Alabama the opportunity to amend its complaint because amendment would have been futile. See Hall v. United Ins. Co. of Am., 367 F.3d 1255, 1263-64 (11th Cir. 2004) (no abuse of discretion in denying leave to amend when amendment would have been futile). A six-year general statute of limitations applies to APA claims brought against the United States; the statute begins to run when the agency issues the final action that gives rise to the claim. See 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a) (“[E]very civil action commenced against the United States shall be barred unless the complaint is filed within six years after the right of action first accrues.”); U.S. Steel Corp. v. Astrue, 495 F.3d 1272, 1280 (11th Cir. 2007). Because the Secretary accepted the lands at issue into trust for the Tribe in 1984, 1992, and 1995, the statute of limitations to challenge those decisions had run by 1991, 1999, and 2002, respectively. Alabama attempts to skirt the time bar by invoking an exception to the APA’s statute of limitations for as-applied challenges. We have allowed an untimely challenge to a regulation on which an agency relies in taking final agency action on the ground that the regulation was outside the agency’s statutory authority. See Legal Envtl. Assistance Found., Inc. v. EPA, 118 F.3d 1467, 1472- 21 Alabama never filed a motion to amend its complaint to add the Secretary as a party or to add an APA claim in the district court, but it did request such leave in its response to the United States’s amicus brief in the district court. 23 Case: 14-12004 Date Filed: 09/03/2015 Page: 24 of 42 73 (11th Cir. 1997) (citing NLRB Union v. Fed. Labor Relations Auth., 834 F.2d 191, 194-97 (D.C. Cir. 1987)). But we are unpersuaded that the exception applies in this case. The exception gives a party ultimately affected by a rule “an opportunity to question [the rule’s] validity” when the party could not have brought a timely challenge. NLRB Union, 834 F.2d at 196 (internal quotation marks omitted). Alabama does not argue it was unaware that the Secretary was taking land into trust for the Tribe; indeed, record evidence confirms that Alabama was given notice when the Secretary took the lands into trust. Because Alabama could have brought a timely APA challenge, we will not carve out an exception to the six-year statute of limitations. See Big Lagoon Rancheria, 789 F.3d at 954 n.6 (rejecting, based on evidence showing that California had previously acknowledged that the Secretary had taken the land at issue into trust, the argument that the state should be permitted to raise an untimely challenge to the Secretary’s land-into-trust decision). We are in no position, given the procedural posture of this case, to disturb the Secretary’s long-ago decisions to take the lands in question into trust— decisions which Alabama could have but chose not to challenge at the time. As the district court found, the deeds to the lands on which the casinos sit demonstrate the United States holds title in trust for the benefit of the Tribe. Because the lands at 24 Case: 14-12004 Date Filed: 09/03/2015 Page: 25 of 42 issue are properly considered “Indian lands,” the Individual Defendants are immune from Alabama’s state law claim. 22