Opinion ID: 169792
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Tenneco

Text: The Miner parties argue that the district court properly relied on Tenneco, 725 F.2d 572, in denying the Nation's motion to dismiss. The non-Indian plaintiff in Tenneco filed an action in district court against an Indian tribe and tribal officers, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief with respect to certain tribal ordinances it contended were unconstitutional, preempted by federal regulation, or exceeded the scope of Indian sovereignty over non-Indians. Id. at 574. We noted that Indian tribes' limited sovereign immunity from suit is well-established and that the tribe in that case ha[d] not chosen to waive that immunity. Id. We then proceeded to consider whether the tribe's sovereign immunity extended to the tribal-officer defendants, holding: When the complaint alleges that the named officer defendants have acted outside the amount of authority that the sovereign is capable of bestowing, an exception to the doctrine of sovereign immunity is invoked. If the sovereign did not have the power to make a law, then the official by necessity acted outside the scope of his authority in enforcing it, making him liable to suit. Any other rule would mean that a claim of sovereign immunity would protect a sovereign in the exercise of power it does not possess. Id. (citation omitted). Thus, we concluded that the tribal officer defendants were not protected by the tribe's immunity and that the suit could go forward against them. Id. at 575. We noted that our holding was consistent with Santa Clara Pueblo, where the Supreme Court held that a tribal officer was not protected by the tribe's immunity from suit. See Tenneco, 725 F.2d at 574-75 (citing Santa Clara Pueblo, 436 U.S. 49, 59, 98 S.Ct. 1670, 56 L.Ed.2d 106). We also concluded that, in the suit against the tribal officers, the extent of the tribe's sovereignty to enact the challenged ordinances raised a federal issue sufficient for federal-question jurisdiction in the district court. See id. at 575. Like this case, Tenneco involved two different aspects of an Indian tribe's sovereignty: its immunity from suit and the extent of its power to enact and enforce laws affecting non-Indians. But it does not stand for the proposition, as the Miner parties suggest, that an Indian tribe cannot invoke its sovereign immunity from suit in an action that challenges the limits of the tribe's authority over non-Indians. On the contrary, we held in Tenneco that the tribe was immune from suit. See id. at 574. Here, because the Miner parties named only the Nation itself as a defendant, we do not reach the question whether any of the Nation's officials would be subject to suit in an action raising the same claims.