Opinion ID: 808281
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: prior proceedings and decisions

Text: Although the Department of the Interior treated the Nation’s trust application as an ex parte filing, in March 2009, both the City of Glendale and the Gila River Indian Community6 filed lengthy submissions opposing the trust application. Their submissions argued that Parcel 2 fell “within the corporate limits” of the City of Glendale and was therefore ineligible for trust status under § 6(d) of the Gila Bend Act. The Secretary of the Interior concluded that the requirements of the Gila Bend Act were met. Specifically, Parcel 2 is wholly within Maricopa County and is outside the City of Glendale’s corporate limits. In considering whether the land qualified for trust status under § 6(d), the Secretary explained that “[t]he Western Regional Director of the BIA, acting under authority of the Secretary, issued a waiver under Section 6(d) . . . that allowed the Nation to purchase up to five (5) separate areas of replacement land, rather than three, and further waived the requirement that one of these areas be contiguous to the San Lucy reservation.” In any event, since Parcel 2 is only the second replacement land area to be held in trust under the Act, those waivers do not directly implicate the analysis here. Thus, in accord with the mandate of the Act, the Secretary determined that Parcel 2 must be held in trust for the Nation. In upholding the Secretary of the Interior’s decision, in a careful, comprehensive opinion, the district court concluded that Glendale had waived its argument regarding a total acreage cap under § 6(c) of the Act, because it failed to raise the issue in the administrative proceeding.7 The district court then 6 The Gila River Indian Community is a separate tribe whose gaming interests are implicated by the Nation’s plans to develop a casino on Parcel 2. 7 We note that, according to the Secretary, the normal “notice and comment provisions of 25 C.F.R. §§ 151.10 and 151.11(d), requiring that the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] notify state and local governments of the land-into-trust application, are not applicable” to this transaction. GLENDALE v. UNITED STATES 10963 deemed the statutory language “within the corporate limits” in § 6(d) to be ambiguous as to county islands like Parcel 2, and concluded that Arizona law was inconclusive. Applying Chevron, the court deferred to the agency’s interpretation of the statute and affirmed the trust decision as “based on a permissible construction of the statute.” See Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Res. Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843 (1984). Finally, the district court rejected the constitutional arguments under the Tenth Amendment and the Indian Commerce Clause. “We review the grant of summary judgment de novo, thus reviewing directly the agency’s action under the Administrative Procedure Act’s (APA) arbitrary and capricious standard.” Gifford Pinchot Task Force v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Serv., 378 F.3d 1059, 1065 (9th Cir. 2004).