Opinion ID: 757674
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Passage of the 1990 Amendments

Text: 32 Within months of Duro, Congress passed Pub.L. No. 101-511, § 8077 of which amended the ICRA to legislatively overrule the Supreme Court's decision. While the legislative history of this section suggests that Congress did not intend to delegate such authority to the tribes, that is essentially the amendments' effect. While Congress is always free to amend laws it believes the Supreme Court has misinterpreted, it cannot somehow erase the fact that the Court did interpret the prior law. In other words, once the Supreme Court has ruled that the law is X, Congress can come back and say, no, the law is 'Y,'  but it cannot say that the law was never X or always Y. The Court's decision is the correct statement of what the law always was, even if no one knew it until the Supreme Court so held. See Rivers v. Roadway Express, Inc., 511 U.S. 298, 313 n. 12, 114 S.Ct. 1510, 128 L.Ed.2d 274 (1994) ([W]hen this Court construes a statute, it is explaining its understanding of what the statute has meant continuously since the date when it became law.... Thus, it is not accurate to say that the Court's decision ... 'changed' the law that previously prevailed ... when this case was filed. Rather, given the structure of our judicial system, [our] opinion finally decided what [the statute] had always meant....). Thus regardless of Congress' intent to declare that tribes always had the inherent authority to try non-member Indians, that simply cannot be what the amendments accomplished. The only way to treat the 1990 ICRA amendments is as an affirmative delegation of jurisdiction, which may or may not apply retroactively, but which did not exist prior to 1990. 7 33 Of course, if Congress could somehow negate the Supreme Court's ruling in Duro-that is, if Congress had the power to pretend (successfully) that Duro was never decided, and make the final, binding, decision on whether the tribes have always had the retained inherent authority to exercise criminal jurisdiction over non-member Indians-then the 1990 amendments would not constitute an affirmative delegation of jurisdiction. Congress would not really have done anything but acknowledge the already extant state of affairs. Thus jurisdiction would not have been imposed after the fact-on the contrary, the Tribal Court would have had jurisdiction over Means at the time he allegedly committed the crimes. There would have been no need for Congress to impose it retroactively (or prospectively, for that matter). In that case, there would be no need for any further analysis, as there would be no retroactivity question, no ex post facto question, no equal protection question, and no due process question. However, as we have discussed, Congress does not have the power to negate a Supreme Court decision. No matter how strongly Congress intended for us to view the amendments as nullifying Duro and reinstating the criminal jurisdiction of Indian tribes over non-member Indians so that it forms an unbroken line, extending back into history, Mousseaux v. United States Comm'r of Indian Affairs, 806 F.Supp. 1433, 1443 (D.S.D.1992), we cannot do so. The 1990 amendments must be treated as an affirmative delegation of power, and must consequently be examined to determine if that affirmative delegation should be applied retroactively or not. 34