Opinion ID: 534558
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Suit Against the Tribe

Text: 3 The district court ruled that plaintiffs' suit against the Tribe is barred by sovereign immunity. This doctrine, which recognizes the sovereignty of Indian tribes and seeks to preserve their autonomy, protects tribes from suits in federal and state courts. Wichita & Affiliated Tribes of Oklahoma v. Hodel, 788 F.2d 765, 771 (D.C.Cir.1986). The Supreme Court has stated unequivocally that Indian tribes possess the common-law immunity from suit traditionally enjoyed by sovereign powers. Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 58, 98 S.Ct. 1670, 1677, 56 L.Ed.2d 106 (1978). This immunity can be waived both by tribal consent, see Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe, 617 F.2d 537 (10th Cir.1980) (en banc), aff'd on other grounds, 455 U.S. 130, 102 S.Ct. 894, 71 L.Ed.2d 21 (1982), and by Congressional action, see Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 58, 98 S.Ct. at 1677. However, [i]t is settled that a waiver of sovereign immunity 'cannot be implied but must be unequivocally expressed.'  Id. 4 Plaintiffs make three arguments in an attempt to overcome the jurisdictional bar of sovereign immunity. 2 First, plaintiffs assert that their claims under Title I of the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA), 25 U.S.C. §§ 1301-1303 (1982 & Supp. IV 1986), should not have been dismissed because the ICRA, as interpreted by this court in Dry Creek Lodge, Inc. v. Arapahoe & Shoshone Tribes, 623 F.2d 682 (10th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1118, 101 S.Ct. 931, 66 L.Ed.2d 847 (1981), deprives the Tribe of immunity from suit under its provisions. Plaintiffs alternatively urge that the Tribe waived its immunity to suit pursuant to the ICRA by virtue of a provision in the Cherokee Constitution. Finally, plaintiffs argue that the Tribe is amenable to suit under the various civil rights acts because the Treaty of 1866 limits the Tribe's sovereign power and, concomitantly, limits the scope of protection from suit afforded by sovereign immunity. 5 Santa Clara Pueblo and our decision in Wheeler v. Swimmer, 835 F.2d 259 (10th Cir.1987), make clear that plaintiffs' reliance on the ICRA is misplaced. In Santa Clara Pueblo, a female member of the tribe and her daughter challenged a tribal ordinance that denied tribal membership to the children of a female member who married outside the tribe. The plaintiffs relied on Title I of the ICRA which confers certain civil rights on members of the American Indian tribes, including the right to equal protection of the laws. See 25 U.S.C. § 1302(8). The Court acknowledged that the ICRA had modified the substantive law applicable to the exercise of sovereign tribal powers, but concluded that this modification by itself could not be interpreted as a waiver of the immunity from suit traditionally enjoyed by sovereign powers. Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 57-59, 98 S.Ct. at 1676-77. Noting that a waiver of sovereign immunity cannot be implied but must be unequivocally expressed, the Court found nothing in Title I which purports to subject tribes to the jurisdiction of the federal courts in civil actions for injunctive or declaratory relief. Id. at 58-59, 98 S.Ct. at 1677. 6 In Swimmer, 835 F.2d 259, a case arising from the same factual context as the present case, disappointed candidates for Cherokee Nation tribal offices sought federal court review of the tribal election process. They alleged, inter alia, that the tribe and various tribal officials had deprived plaintiff candidates of their civil rights in violation of the ICRA. We rejected plaintiffs' effort to secure federal relief for a violation of the ICRA, relying on Santa Clara Pueblo. The only federal relief available under the [ICRA] against a tribe or its officials is a writ of habeas corpus. Actions for any other relief must be brought through tribal forums. 3 Id. at 261 (citation omitted). 7 Plaintiffs contend that their suit is not barred because it falls within an exception to tribal sovereign immunity outlined by this court in Dry Creek Lodge, 623 F.2d 682. A majority of the panel in Dry Creek Lodge concluded that such an exception exists under the ICRA where the dispute does not concern internal tribal issues, the plaintiff is non-Indian, and tribal remedies are unavailable. 4 The district court here held this exception inapplicable to plaintiffs' case because plaintiffs failed to pursue available tribal remedies and because the dispute concerns the internal tribal affairs of membership and government. We agree that plaintiffs do not fit within the exception outlined in Dry Creek Lodge, an exception this court has narrowly construed. 5 8 Nor are we persuaded by plaintiffs' argument that the Cherokee Constitution waives the Tribe's immunity from suit under the ICRA. A waiver, as we noted at the outset,  'cannot be implied but must be unequivocally expressed.'  Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 U.S. at 58, 98 S.Ct. at 1677. Plaintiffs urge us to construe language in the Cherokee Constitution providing that the appropriate protection guaranteed by the ICRA shall apply to all members of the Cherokee Nation, Brief for Appellants at 27, as such an express waiver. The cited language no more constitutes an unequivocal expression of waiver than does the language of the ICRA, which itself creates the substantive rights supposedly guaranteed to all members of the Cherokee Nation, language which the Supreme Court refused to interpret as a waiver. 9 Plaintiffs primarily rely on two Ninth Circuit cases in arguing that the Treaty of 1866 limits the Cherokee Nation's sovereignty and, concomitantly, the Tribe's immunity from suit. See Hardin v. White Mountain Apache Tribe, 761 F.2d 1285 (9th Cir.1985), superseded, 779 F.2d 476 (1985); Snow v. Quinault Indian Nation, 709 F.2d 1319 (9th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1214, 104 S.Ct. 2655, 81 L.Ed.2d 362 (1984). Although both of those cases state in dicta that tribal immunity does not bar  'actions which allege conduct that is determined to be outside the scope of a tribe's sovereign powers,'  Hardin, 761 F.2d at 1287 (quoting Snow, 709 F.2d at 1321), the Ninth Circuit has subsequently repudiated this theory. The Hardin decision upon which plaintiffs rely was superseded by an opinion which omits the above statement from the sovereign immunity discussion. See Hardin v. White Mountain Apache Tribe, 779 F.2d 476, 478-79 (9th Cir.1985). More significantly, in Chemehuevi Indian Tribe v. California State Bd. of Equalization, 757 F.2d 1047, 1052 (9th Cir.), rev'd per curiam on other grounds, 474 U.S. 9, 106 S.Ct. 289, 88 L.Ed.2d 9 (1985), the Ninth Circuit characterized the statement in Snow as apparently inadvertently misapplying the law. The court went on to hold that [t]he tribe remains immune from suit regardless of any allegation that it acted beyond its authority or outside of its powers. Id. 10 We believe that Snow and the initial Hardin opinion are contary to the reasoning and holding of the Supreme Court in Santa Clara Pueblo. See Merrion, 617 F.2d at 540 ([Santa Clara Pueblo ] clearly hold[s] a tribe cannot be sued absent consent.) In Santa Clara Pueblo, the Court adhered to the traditional doctrine of sovereign immunity even though the ICRA imposes substantive constraints on tribes. The underlying premise of the Court's ruling is that a tribe acting in derogation of the ICRA, and thus arguably beyond the scope of its sovereign powers, is nonetheless immune from suit absent a waiver of sovereign immunity. The Court implicitly refused to find a waiver arising solely from the alleged violation of the ICRA, requiring instead that an explicit waiver be found in some other source. Consistent with the Court's approach in Santa Clara Pueblo, we believe that the question before this court must be whether the language of the 1866 Treaty constitutes a waiver. 11 The 1866 Treaty provides in relevant part that all freedmen who have been liberated by voluntary act of their former owners or by law, ... and their descendants, shall have all the rights of native Cherokees. Treaty Between the United States of America and the Cherokee Nation of Indians, July 19, 1866, art. IX, 14 Stat. 799, 801. We are not persuaded that this language constitutes an unequivocal expression of waiver by the Cherokee Nation of its sovereign immunity. Like the provisions of the ICRA at issue in Santa Clara Pueblo, this provision only places substantive constraints on the Tribe, it does not waive the Tribe's immunity from a suit alleging non-compliance with these constraints.