Court Opinion

ID: 9439234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:26:40.928849+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:14.751634
License: Public Domain

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part:
I agree with the court’s opinion except for part II.B., which remands the case to the Board for “further consideration of the *719petitioner’s argument from the” Indian Self-Determination Act. Maj. op. at 718.
No principle of administrative law compels an agency to respond to gibberish. It is therefore understandable that the Board never responded to an argument that the Indian Self-Determination Act removed Yukon from the Board’s jurisdiction. Maj. op. at 717. The Board did not respond because Yukon never made any coherent argument to this effect. And it barely managed to make one in this court. About all Yukon did before the Board and before us is slap the Self-Determination Act down on the table in the hope that someone will figure out why it should matter.
Here are the few assertions Yukon presented to the Board regarding the statute. The Self-Determination Act “authorizes and encourages tribal governments to assume operation of federal Indian programs.” Employer’s Brief on Review of Jurisdictional Determination at 5. Indeed it does. “Through the Act, Congress intended to shift programs from the federal government to tribal governments, thereby reducing federal domination of Indian programs.” Id. That appears correct. “Nothing in the federal government’s authorization requires that the tribes’ ... activities [conducted pursuant to the Self-Determination Act] occur ‘on reservation.’ ” Id. at 8. This is obvious; Yukon’s hospital is not on a reservation. (No one — the Board included — has required Yukon or any Indian tribe to conduct such activities on reservations.) What then is Yukon’s point? All of its statements about the Self-Determination Act are contained in the section of its brief claiming an exemption as a state or federal government under § 2(2). The section’s heading is entitled “THE HOSPITAL IS OPERATED BY FEDERALLY RECOGNIZED SOVEREIGN TRIBES ENTITLED TO THE GOVERNMENTAL EXEMPTION.” Id. at 4. The “governmental exemption” is § 2(2) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 152(2), the provision granting an exemption to the federal government and state and local governments. The Board rejected this argument, correctly we all agree at least to the extent Yukon wanted to be considered a state. So what was left of Yukon’s reliance on the Self-Determination Act in its case before the Board? There are two possibilities— nothing or nothing comprehensible. In either event, the Board had no duty to respond.
My colleagues think that perhaps Yukon also wanted to be considered the United States for the purpose of § 2(2). (The section provides in relevant part that the term employer “shall not include the United States or any wholly owned Government corporation.” 29 U.S.C. § 152(2).) Yukon’s briefs in this court hint here and there that it might have had this in mind, although the thrust of its presentation to this court and the Board was the rather inconsistent assertion that it — Yukon—'was a separate, independent sovereign. See, e.g., Brief of Petitioner at 36 (characterizing relationship under Self-Determination Act as “inter-governmental delegation, transferring responsibility from one sovereign to another”); Employer’s Brief on Review of Jurisdictional Determination (No. 19-RC-13271) at 5 (“[a]ceess to the benefits of the Act is only available to sovereigns”); id. (“by definition under the Act, only sovereigns may compact as an exercise of their sovereignty”).
At all events, the Board said enough on this subject, given the incoherence of Yukon’s position. The Board wrote: “Significantly, the Employer was not brought into existence by a special legislative Act. Rather, it is a regional nonprofit corporation formed ... under applicable Alaska laws. Under these circumstances, we find that the Employer is not exempt under Section 2(2) ‘as an integral part of the government of the United States as a whole.’ ” Decision and Order, Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corp., 328 N.L.R.B. No. 101 at 4, 1999 WL 419507 (June 18, 1999). In other words, whatever the Self-Determination Act means, or whatever Yukon *720thinks it means, Yukon remains an independent Alaska corporation, not a part of the government of the United States. If Yukon believes the Act provides otherwise, it has yet to explain why.