Opinion ID: 623760
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Seizures Outside MCN’s Indian Country

Text: MCN complains that the State’s practice of enforcing the Excise Tax Statute by seizing cigarettes outside Indian country that do not have a tax or tax-free stamp infringes on its tribal sovereignty. The Supreme Court again instructs us otherwise. Such seizures are permissible, especially when, as here, a tribe fails to cooperate and collect valid state taxes on sales of cigarettes to non-tribal members on Indian country. See Colville, 447 U.S. at 161-62. In Colville, the Court stated: Although the cigarettes in transit are as yet exempt from state taxation, they -35- are not immune from seizure when the Tribes, as here, have refused to fulfill collection and remittance obligations which the State has validly imposed. . . . By seizing cigarettes en route to the reservation, the State polices against wholesale evasion of its own valid taxes without unnecessarily intruding on core tribal interests. Id. at 161-62 (citation omitted). The Supreme Court reaffirmed this view in Potowatomi: “States may of course collect the sales tax from cigarette wholesalers . . . by seizing unstamped cigarettes off the reservation.” 498 U.S. at 514; see also Muscogee I, 611 F.3d at 1237 (collecting cases). The State’s seizure of unstamped cigarettes to enforce the Excise Tax Statute is accordingly not an impermissible burden on MCN. For these reasons, we hold that the Excise Tax Statute does not violate MCN’s right to “make [its] own laws and be ruled by them.” Williams, 358 U.S. at 220.