Opinion ID: 888091
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The McCarran Amendment.

Text: ¶ 12 Title 43, Section 666, United States Code (enacted July 10, 1952, c. 651, Title II, § 208(a)-(c), 66 Stat. 560.), commonly known as the McCarran Amendment due to its sponsorship by Nevada Senator Pat McCarran, reads as follows: § 666. Suits for adjudication of water rights (a) Joinder of United States as defendant; costs. Consent is given to join the United States as a defendant in any suit (1) for the adjudication of rights to the use of water of a river system or other source, or (2) for the administration of such rights, where it appears that the United States is the owner of or is in the process of acquiring water rights by appropriation under State law, by purchase, by exchange, or otherwise, and the United States is a necessary party to such suit. The United States, when a party to any such suit, shall (1) be deemed to have waived any right to plead that the State laws are inapplicable or that the United States is not amenable thereto by reason of its sovereignty, and (2) shall be subject to the judgments, orders, and decrees of the court having jurisdiction, and may obtain review thereof, in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances: Provided, That no judgment for costs shall be entered against the United States in any such suit. (b) Service of summons. Summons or other process in any such suit shall be served upon the Attorney General or his designated representative. (c) Joinder in suits involving use of interstate streams by State. Nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing the joinder of the United States in any suit or controversy in the Supreme Court of the United States involving the right of States to the use of the water of any interstate stream. ¶ 13 A plain reading of the statute's text indicates that the United States has waived its sovereign immunity so that it may be joined as a defendant when it is a necessary party in cases seeking to adjudicate or administer water rights in state courts. [3] The United States Supreme Court has interpreted this waiver to extend to the Indian tribes, providing consent to determine in state court federal reserved water rights held on behalf of Indians. Colorado River Water Cons. Dist. v. U.S., 424 U.S. 800, 809, 96 S.Ct. 1236, 1242, 47 L.Ed.2d 483 (1976). The Amendment's waiver is not for purposes of private suits against the United States or the Indian tribes; rather, it is limited to comprehensive state adjudications of water rights. Dugan v. Rank, 372 U.S. 609, 618, 83 S.Ct. 999, 1005, 10 L.Ed.2d 15 (1963); U.S. v. District Court for Eagle County, 401 U.S. 520, 525, 91 S.Ct. 998, 1002, 28 L.Ed.2d 278 (1971); U.S. v. District Court for Water Div. No. 5, 401 U.S. 527, 529, 91 S.Ct. 1003, 1005, 28 L.Ed.2d 284 (1971). ¶ 14 In support of their argument that change of use proceedings are improper piecemeal adjudications, the Tribes contend that, according to judicial interpretation of the McCarran Amendment, DNRC has no jurisdiction over the Tribes and their water rights except within the context of a general inter sese water rights adjudication that satisfies McCarran requirements. Absent a proper McCarran adjudication, the Tribes, retain sovereign immunity from all DNRC proceedings. Greely, 219 Mont. at 84-85, 712 P.2d at 759; Stults, ¶¶ 38-39. It is not entirely clear what the Tribes mean. In the case at bar, the Tribes are not defendants, nor are they generally parties to DNRC proceedings that administer state appropriative rights; thus, to speak of the Tribes' sovereign immunity from such proceedings is inapt. Moreover, sovereign immunity is a doctrine that precludes a party from suing a sovereign government without that government's consent, see Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed.2004), and it is not at all clear that DNRC's change of use proceedings are suits. However, the above quotation expresses the sentiment that is a common thread throughout the Tribes' argument: that DNRC lacks authority to regulate state appropriative water rights held by non-Indians on fee land within the boundaries of the Reservation. Though not squarely addressed by the parties, we must address this issue of tribal sovereigntywhich is broader than sovereign immunityas a necessary predicate to deciding whether change of use proceedings of this type are permissible under Montana law. See Leichtfuss v. Dabney, 2005 MT 271, ¶ 37 n. 8, 329 Mont. 129, ¶ 37 n. 8, 122 P.3d 1220, ¶ 37 n. 8 (`a court may consider an issue antecedent to . . . and ultimately dispositive of the dispute before it, even an issue the parties fail to identify and brief.' (quoting United States Nat. Bank of Ore. v. Independent Ins. Agents of America, Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 447, 113 S.Ct. 2173, 2178, 124 L.Ed.2d 402 (1993))). If, by virtue of the Tribes' sovereignty, the State were to have no regulatory authority over water rights on non-Indian fee land on the Reservation, then Montana law on the subject would be irrelevant. See Ciotti, 278 Mont. at 65, 923 P.2d at 1082 (In the absence of state jurisdiction to regulate or administer tribal water, compliance with the Water Use Act is immaterial. (Leaphart, J., concurring)). ¶ 15 Before embarking on our sovereignty analysis, we must clarify the law as it relates to the McCarran Amendment. The Tribes' argument and some of the language used by this Court on the subject in Stults, ¶¶ 20, 38-39, misconstrues the holding of Colorado River and conflates three concepts: federal abstention, sovereign immunity, and sovereignty. [4] ¶ 16 In Colorado River, the United States Supreme Court held that a federal district court, in deferring to a similar comprehensive state court proceeding then in progress, properly dismissed an action by the United States seeking to adjudicate water rights in several rivers and their tributaries. The Court gave the following rationale: Turning to the present case, a number of factors clearly counsel against concurrent federal proceedings. The most important of these is the McCarran Amendment itself. The clear federal policy evinced by that legislation is the avoidance of piecemeal adjudication of water rights in a river system. . . . The consent to jurisdiction given by the McCarran Amendment bespeaks a policy that recognizes the availability of comprehensive state systems for adjudication of water rights as the means for achieving these goals. Colorado River, 424 U.S. at 819, 96 S.Ct. at 1247 (emphasis added). In a sequel to Colorado River, Arizona v. San Carlos Apache Tribe, 463 U.S. 545, 103 S.Ct. 3201, 77 L.Ed.2d 837 (1983), the Court held that federal district courts should dismiss suits brought by Indian tribes for the adjudication of water rights in favor of concurrent comprehensive state proceedings. The Court reiterated its rationale from Colorado River: The McCarran Amendment, as interpreted in Colorado River, allows and encourages state courts to undertake the task of quantifying Indian water rights in the course of comprehensive water adjudications. Although adjudication of those rights in federal court instead might in the abstract be practical, and even wise, it will be neither practical nor wise as long as it creates the possibility of duplicative litigation, tension and controversy between the federal and state forums, hurried and pressured decisionmaking, and confusion over the disposition of property rights. San Carlos Apache, 463 U.S. at 569, 103 S.Ct. at 3215. That the text of the McCarran Amendment was not determinative for either of the above holdings is evidenced by the fact that the United States and Indian tribes were plaintiffs in those cases. As noted above, the Amendment's waiver of immunity as stated in the text applies only when the United States or Indian tribes are joined as defendants. ¶ 17 Other than to apply the waiver to the Indian tribes, see ¶ 13, the United States Supreme Court did not consider in either Colorado River or San Carlos Apache the extent or quality of the immunity waived by the Amendment. Indeed, the Court did no statutory interpretation of the McCarran Amendment at all. See San Carlos Apache, 463 U.S. at 573, 103 S.Ct. at 3217 (one may search in vain for any textual support for the Court's holding) (Stevens, J., and Blackmun, J., dissenting). Rather, it used the perceived public policy underlying the Amendment to fashion a new form of federal abstention doctrine. See Colorado River, 424 U.S. at 819, 96 S.Ct. at 1247 (The clear federal policy evinced by that legislation is the avoidance of piecemeal adjudication of water rights in a river system. (Emphasis added.)); San Carlos Apache, 463 U.S. at 572, 103 S.Ct. at 3216 (In [ Colorado River ] this Court recognized a narrow rule of abstention governing controversies involving federal water rights.) (Marshall, J., dissenting). The federal courts' abstention doctrine does not necessarily have any relevant relationship to a waiver of sovereign immunity because the two concepts are separate and distinct. As already mentioned, sovereign immunity precludes a party from suing a sovereign government without that government's consent, whereas abstention relates to when a court may decline to exercise or postpone the exercise of its jurisdiction. . . . Colorado River, 424 U.S. at 813, 96 S.Ct. at 1244. The connection that the Court in Colorado River and San Carlos Apache established between the two has only to do with a policy preference that comprehensive water rights adjudication should take place in state courts rather than federal courts. ¶ 18 Despite the Tribes' intimation to the contrary, that federal court policy preference, though relevant, is not necessarily determinative of the question whether DNRC's regulation of state appropriative water rights on the Reservation infringes on the Tribes' sovereignty, i.e., the supreme dominion, authority, or rule that governments typically enjoy. See Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed.2004); see also City of Bisbee v. Cochise County, 52 Ariz. 1, 78 P.2d 982, 985-87 (1938). Though the doctrine of sovereign immunity is derived from sovereignty, see The Federalist No. 81 (Alexander Hamilton) (It is inherent in the nature of sovereignty not to be amenable to the suit of an individual without its consent. ), it is a much narrower concept limited to the realm of lawsuits. As stated above, in the immediate context, issues of sovereignty  but not immunity  determine the extent to which the State, via DNRC, can regulate activities within the boundaries of the Reservation without offending the status of the Tribes as `domestic dependent nations' that exercise inherent sovereign authority over their members and territories. Oklahoma Tax Comm'n v. Potawatomi Tribe, 498 U.S. 505, 509, 111 S.Ct. 905, 909, 112 L.Ed.2d 1112 (1991). To resolve this tension between sovereigns, we turn now to examine jurisprudence more specifically addressing the relationship between state regulatory power and the right of Indian tribes to govern their lands.