Opinion ID: 775203
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Reach of the Doctrine

Text: 14 This Court and the Supreme Court have required abstention under the tribal exhaustion rule on just three occasions: LaPlante, 480 U.S. at 14-20; National Farmers, 471 U.S. at 853-56; and Basil Cook Enters. v. St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, 117 F.3d 61 (2d Cir. 1997). In each instance, the plaintiff was litigating a previously-filed, ongoing tribal court action, and was asking the federal court to interfere with those tribal proceedings. These cases are procedurally distinguishable from Garcia's case because Garcia's claims have not been in tribal court. We conclude that the reasoning of these cases and the policy considerations that underlie them militate in favor of the opposite result in this case: the comity and deference owed to a tribal court that is adjudicating an intra-tribal dispute under tribal law does not compel abstention by a federal court where a non-member asserts state and federal claims and nothing is pending in the tribal court. 15 In the seminal tribal exhaustion case, National Farmers, the federal court granted an injunction against enforcement of a default judgment entered in a tribal court, on the ground that the tribal court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the defaulted claim. See National Farmers, 471 U.S. at 848-49. The Supreme Court held that even though tribal court jurisdiction presented a question of federal law, see National Farmers, 471 U.S. at 853; 28 U.S.C. § 1331, the federal court was required to stay its hand because the examination of the tribal court's jurisdiction should be conducted in the first instance in the Tribal Court itself. Id. at 850-53, 856. The motion for an injunction could be entertained in federal court, but only after the federal court plaintiffs exhausted the jurisdictional argument in the tribal judicial system. 16 In LaPlante, the Supreme Court considered whether a federal court may exercise diversity jurisdiction before the tribal court system has [had] an opportunity to determine its own jurisdiction. LaPlante, 480 U.S. at 11. The federal court plaintiff was an insurer that had been named as a defendant in an ongoing tribal court proceeding. In the tribal forum, the insurer lost a jurisdictional challenge. While awaiting tribal appellate review, the insurer commenced a federal diversity suit against all the other parties to the tribal court proceeding, and sought a declaration of tribal law on an issue that would have been dispositive of an affirmative defense raised in the tribal forum. Id. at 11-13 & n.3; see also id. at 22 n. (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (noting that the majority seems to assume that the merits of this controversy are governed by `tribal law'). 17 The Court held that respect for tribal self-government required the federal judiciary to give the tribal court a `full opportunity to determine its own jurisdiction.' Id. at 16 (quoting National Farmers, 471 U.S. at 857); see also Strate v. A-1 Contractors, 520 U.S. 438, 451 (1997) (interpreting LaPlante). Adjudication of the affirmative defense by a non-tribal court would infringe upon tribal law-making authority, because tribal courts are best qualified to interpret and apply tribal law. LaPlante, 480 U.S. at 16. Placing emphasis on the holding in National Farmers, the LaPlante opinion added that the insurer eventually would be permitted to bring a federal court challenge to the tribal court's jurisdiction, but only after pursuing all available appeals within the tribal judicial system. See id. at 16-17, 19 & n.12. 18 This Court has had a single occasion to rule on the exhaustion of tribal remedies. In that case, the federal court plaintiffs sought both to enjoin a previously-filed tribal court suit against them (an analog to National Farmers) and to obtain rulings on the merits of issues pending in the tribal forum (an analog to LaPlante). See Basil Cook Enters., 117 F.3d at 64. Applying the two foundational Supreme Court cases, we affirmed the district court's decision to stay[] further proceedings in federal court pending the Tribal Court's determination of jurisdiction. Id. at 64, 65-69. 19 The Supreme Court recently explained: Exhaustion was appropriate in [both National Farmers and LaPlante] because `Congress is committed to a policy of supporting tribal self-government... [which] favors a rule that will provide the forum whose jurisdiction is being challenged the first opportunity to evaluate the factual and legal bases for the challenge.' El Paso Natural Gas Co. v. Netzsosie, 526 U.S. 473, 484 (1999) (quoting National Farmers, 471 U.S. at 856) (emphasis added). We have expressed the general principle as follows: [P]arties who challenge, under federal law, the jurisdiction of a tribal court to entertain a cause of action must first present their claim to the tribal court before seeking to defeat tribal jurisdiction in any collateral or parallel federal court proceeding. Basil Cook Enters., 117 F.3d at 65. 20 These cases bar interference by federal courts to defeat or circumvent the ongoing exercise of jurisdiction by tribal courts; Garcia's claims, however, are pending nowhere but in the Northern District of New York. Other circuits have required abstention even where no proceeding was pending in tribal court. See Ninigret Dev. Corp. v. Narragansett Indian Wetuomuck Hous. Auth., 207 F.3d 21, 31 (1st Cir. 2000) (Where applicable, this prudential doctrine has force whether or not an action actually is pending in a tribal court.); United States v. Tsosie, 92 F.3d 1037, 1041 (10th Cir. 1996) ([T]he exhaustion rule does not require an action to be pending in tribal court.); Crawford v. Genuine Parts Co., 947 F.2d 1405, 1407 (9th Cir. 1991) (same); see generally Blake A. Watson, The Curious Case of Disappearing Federal Jurisdiction over Federal Enforcement of Federal Law: A Vehicle for Reassessment of the Tribal Exhaustion / Abstention Doctrine, 80 Marq. L. Rev. 531, 579-80 (1997). These courts impose the exhaustion rule in any action over which a tribal court might have had concurrent jurisdiction if the plaintiff had chosen the tribal forum. Tsosie, 92 F.3d at 1042; see also Crawford, 947 F.2d at 1407; Ninigret Dev. Corp., 207 F.3d at 31. Indeed, the Ninth Circuit views the absence of a pending tribal suit to be irrelevant. Crawford, 947 F.2d at 1407. 21 It is unnecessary for us now to decide categorically whether and how far the doctrine of tribal exhaustion should be extended beyond the scope of its application to cases by the Supreme Court. The Seventh Circuit has observed that the two Supreme Court cases dealt only with the situation where a tribal court's jurisdiction over a dispute has been challenged by a later-filed action in federal court.... [However,] the policies underlying the two cases seem broader than this narrow context. Altheimer & Gray v. Sioux Mfg. Corp., 983 F.2d 803, 814 (7th Cir. 1993). We agree. And we therefore consider whether these broader policies and themes--for example, the policy of supporting tribal self-government and self-determination, National Farmers, 471 U.S. at 856, the recognition that a federal court's exercise of jurisdiction over matters relating to reservation affairs can... impair the authority of tribal courts, LaPlante, 480 U.S. at 15, and the view that tribal courts play a vital role in tribal self-government, id. at 14 (see also Altheimer & Gray, 983 F.2d at 813-14)--militate in favor of an expansion of the doctrine in this case. We conclude that they do not.