Court Opinion

ID: 9692791
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:05:47.765203+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:36.996993
License: Public Domain

HEFFERNAN, CHIEF JUSTICE
(dissenting). As the United States Supreme Court has acknowledged, its analysis of the power of states to regulate matters in Indian country, affecting Indians on reservations, has not been “static.” Rice v. Rehner, 463 U.S. 713, 103 S. Ct. 3291, 3294 (1983). However, the Court consistently has held that state jurisdiction in Indian country depends on two considerations, the right of Indians on reservations to govern themselves and the power of the federal government to exert federal authority over Indian matters. Rice, 103 S. Ct. at 3294; White Mountain Apache Tribe v. Bracker, 448 U.S. 136, 142 (1980); Bryan v. Itasca County, 426 U.S. 373, 376 n. 2 (1976); McClanahan v. Arizona State Tax Commission, 411 U.S. 164 (1973).
The “self-government” or “sovereignty analysis and the “federal pre-emption” analysis are intertwined in the Court’s more recent decisions. The Supreme Court has described the Indian right of sovereignty as the “backdrop against which the applicable treaties and federal statutes must be read” in the federal pre-emption analysis. McClanahan, 411 U.S. at 172; Rice, 103 S. Ct. at 3295. The Court has recently explained the relationship between the considerations of tribal sovereignty and fed*220eral pre-emption in an analysis of the scope of state jurisdiction in the following terms:
“We have . . . employed a pre-emption analysis that is informed by historical notions of tribal sovereignty, rather than determined by them.” Rice, id.
The Rice Court then expanded on how historical notions of tribal sovereignty inform the pre-emption analysis:
“When we determine that tradition has recognized a sovereign immunity in favor of the Indians in some respect, then we usually are reluctant to infer that Congress has authorized the assertion of state authority in that respect ‘ “except where Congress has expressly provided that State laws shall apply.” ’ McClanahan, supra, 411 U.S., at 171, 93 S. Ct., at 1261 (quoting U. S. Dept. of the Interior, Federal Indian Law 845 (1958) . . . .” Rice, 103 S. Ct. at 3295.
In other words, when there is a tradition or history of Indian sovereignty, it “may be repealed only by an explicit directive from Congress.” Id. at 3296.
The majority correctly states this analysis (at 215), but, in my opinion, applies it in a way that is neither required nor warranted by the United States Supreme Court’s decisions. The majority states, without citing authority, that “in determining whether a tribe has a tradition of self-government in a particular subject area, we must look at whether the tribe has historically engaged in self-government in that area.” (At 216.)
As used by the United States Supreme Court, the term, “tradition of immunity or self-governance,” means the same thing as “historical notions of tribal sovereignty,” “the right of tribal self-government,” and “notions of sovereignty that have developed from historical traditions of tribal independence.” Rice, 103 S. Ct. at 3295. As I read Rice and other Supreme Court decisions, what *221is required is not that the tribe have a history of regulation and enforcement in a particular area, but that it have a historical right of autonomy or self-regulation in that area. According to the majority — and I agree — the Band has the power to regulate civil traffic matters. I disagree with the majority’s test of self-government. Its test is whether the Band has enacted laws on a particular subject matter. The power to regulate, the right to self-government, must include not only the power to decide to enact laws, but also the power to decide not to enact laws on that subject. Consequently, I believe that the majority’s conclusion, that the Lac du Flambeau Band has no historical tradition of sovereignty in traffic regulation simply because it had no traffic regulations or motor vehicle code at the time of Chapman’s offense, is irrelevant to the self-governing prerogatives of the Band to not regulate a particular activity.1 It is an overly narrow application of the Supreme Court’s tribal sovereignty analysis.
In McClanahan, the Supreme Court held that an Arizona state income tax was unlawful as applied to reservation Indians. As it was to repeat later in Rice, the Court stressed that its pre-emption analysis took, as a backdrop, the tradition of Indian sovereignty. 411 U.S. at 172-73. It is clear from the McClanahan opinion that the “tradition of sovereignty” to which the Supreme Court was referring was the Indians’ historical claim to sovereignty “ ‘as a separate people, with the power of regulating their internal and social relations.’ ” McClanahan, 411 U.S. at 173 (quoting United States v. Jagama, 118 U.S. at 381-82). The McClanahan Court did not inquire whether the Navajo tribe had its own *222system of income taxation, as the analysis of the majority of this court would do.
In Rice, the Supreme Court found that there was no tradition of tribal sovereignty in the area of liquor sales regulation, not because there was no evidence that the Pala tribe had undertaken to regulate liquor sales,2 but rather because federal control of liquor on reservations has been pervasive and comprehensive. 103 S. Ct. at 3296-97. The Rice Court stressed the unique history of “congressional divestment of tribal self-government” in the “narrow context of the regulation of liquor” beginning in colonial days and affecting all tribes. Id.
1 find no similar comprehensive divestment of traditional tribal sovereignty in the area of traffic regulation or similar safety or social regulations. I find nothing to justify the conclusion that the Lac du Flambeau Band has no historical claim to sovereignty and self-regulation in this area. Accordingly, I dissent from the majority opinion.
Under the Rice analysis, which the majority and I both take to be the controlling analysis, a finding that the Lac du Flambeau Band has an unimpaired right of self-regulation in the area of traffic offenses leads to the conclusion that the state, through Vilas county, would have jurisdiction to enforce its traffic regulations only if Congress expressly granted the state this authority. Rice, 103 S. Ct. at 3296. The parties agree, and the majority acknowledges, that the applicable congressional enactment, Pub. L. 280, enacted, as amended in 18 U.S.C. sec. 1162 (1982), does not expressly grant the state the authority to regulate traffic within the Lac du Flambeau reservation. (At 217.) Consequently, I would affirm the decision of the court of appeals that Vilas county *223does not have jurisdiction to enforce its traffic ordinance against an enrolled member of the Lac du Flambeau Band on the Band’s reservation.
Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson joins in this dissent.

 It should be noted, however, that it is implicit in the rationale of the majority that, whenever the Band undertakes traffic regulation and enforcement, the state’s jurisdiction in that respect is ousted.

 The contrary was in fact shown; the Pala tribe has adopted a tribal ordinance regarding the sale of liquor on the reservation. 103 S. Ct. at 3293.