Court Opinion

ID: 9861803
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:35:43.926383+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:29:06.980748
License: Public Domain

*338VANDE WALLE, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
[¶ 15] I respectfully dissent. Although I agree that McKenzie County Soc. Servs. Bd. v. V.G., 392 N.W.2d 399 (N.D.1986) and In Interest of M.L.M., 529 N.W.2d 184 (N.D.1995) are distinguishable on their facts, I am not convinced we should distinguish them. In the first instance, I am uncomfortable with a State court determining what “undermine[s] the authority of the tribal courts over Reservation affairs and hence would infringe on the right of the Indians to govern themselves,” the test prescribed, as the majority notes, by the United States Supreme Court in Williams v. Lee, 358 U.S. 217, 223, 79 S.Ct, 269, 3 L.Ed.2d 251 (1959). Because of the relationship of the federal government to the Indian tribes, see Article 1, § 8 of the United States Constitution (“Congress shall have power ... [t]o regulate commerce ... with the Indian tribes”) and decisions such as Montana v. Blackfeet Tribe of Indians, 471 U.S. 759, 764, 105 S.Ct., 2399, 85 L.Ed.2d 753 (1985) (holding “The Constitution vests the Federal Government with exclusive authority over relations with Indian tribes”) it seems to me to be presumptuous for the State courts to .determine for the Tribes what is infringement on their right to govern themselves.
[¶ 16] Second, the Tribe itself does indeed have an interest in who is declared a parent of a child for, alone, the proceedings may result in the child being declared a member of the Tribe. Although the issue of parenthood may not be an issue in the instant case it very'well may be in the future and ordinarily the Tribe is not a party to proceedings for child support.
[¶ 17] Finally, the majority opinion is on a potential collision course with its concept of concurrent jurisdiction. The collision, of course,, comes when the Tribal court and the State court, each exercising its “concurrent jurisdiction,” issue dueling opinions regarding the same parties and the same facts. Indeed, that was the issue in Byzewski v. Byzewski, 429 N.W.2d 394 (N.D.1988), when the majority of this Court held that the Tribal court, not the State court, has jurisdiction over the child custody and support claims and reversed the State court judgment. In so concluding, the Byzewski majority noted:
Moreover, domestic relations among its members is an important area of “traditional tribal control.” We do not believe this tribal interest in domestic relations dissipates merely because one of the parties to a marriage is a non-Indian. Thus, in view of the traditional tribal interest over domestic relations, which we believe to be an integral component of tribal self-government, a non-Indian divorce plaintiffs compliance ... is not necessarily determinative of a district court’s subject matter jurisdiction over such matters as child custody and support where the custodial domicile has at all pertinent times been on the reservation.
Id. at 399 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
[¶ 18] It might be argued that Byzew-ski is distinguishable because here Barbara is not presently domiciled on the Reservation; but Thomas and the three children for whom support is sought are living on the Reservation and, unlike By-zewski, here both parties are members of the Tribe. Had we not reversed the district court in Byzewski there may have been a stalemate. Byzewski was also decided before this Court adopted N.D.R.Ct. 7.2, requiring the courts of this State to recognize Tribal court judgments except under certain limited conditions, another complicating factor to concurrent jurisdiction. I specially concurred in Byzewski on *339the narrow ground that the Tribal court action predated the State court action, although only by one day. Perhaps that is an answer to the dilemma I pose above. Nevertheless, the race to the Tribal court or State court is a poor response to the Williams infringement test. The Court, applying the Williams test in Byzewski noted that test
while resembling in some respects a sufficient contacts test for ascertaining personal jurisdiction, is actually a rule for gauging whether a court has subject matter jurisdiction over the action itself. Furthermore, contacts within the state but off the reservation, which might arguably suffice to grant a court personal jurisdiction over an Indian domiciled on a reservation, are not necessarily sufficient to grant the court subject matter under the infringement test.
Byzewski, 429 N.W.2d at 398 (citations omitted).
[¶ 19] While I did not sign the Byzew-ski majority but rather concurred on the basis of first in time, I have subsequently recognized Byzewski as the controlling precedent. See In Interest ofM.L.M., 529 N.W.2d at 185, discussing the holding in McKenzie County Social Servs. Bd. v. V.G., 392 N.W.2d 399 (N.D.1986), that the determination of the parentage of a child of Indian Tribal members is a matter that is intimately connected with the Tribe’s right of self-government and citing Williams and Byzewski for the proposition that in view of the availability of a Tribal forum the exercise of jurisdiction by the state district court would unduly infringe on that right.
[1Í 20] Unfortunately, this case was submitted to this Court without briefing by the appellee. Nevertheless, I believe the majority in this case, relying on case law from other jurisdictions whose recognition of Tribal self-government may be substantially different from that in North Dakota, has set out on a substantially different path from that established in our previous case law. Because I believe that path does interfere with Tribal self-government and is not well advised, I dissent.
[¶ 21]
Gerald W. Vande Walle, C.J.