Court Opinion

ID: 9495627
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:07:27.265102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:07.768208
License: Public Domain

*84WINTER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in affirming the judgment, but for very different reasons from those expressed by Judge Van Graafeiland. For the sake of brevity, the text of my opinion is largely confined to the statement of my position, and the recitation of points on which I agree or disagree with my colleagues is left to footnotes.
The principal question argued by the parties is whether, through a series of treaties with the State of New York in the first two decades of the Nineteenth Century (hereinafter “the Conveyances”), the St. Regis Tribe validly ceded portions of its Reservation. Each party to this litigation, for its own reasons, assumes that appellant has valid title to the land in question. Appellant does so for self-evident reasons. Appellees in turn cannot question appellant’s title without questioning the title of all the current owners of land purportedly transferred by the Conveyances. My colleagues treat this entirely self-serving agreement as binding on us and thereafter pursue very different lines of reasoning as to its consequences on this appeal.1 Such an agreement, concerning a matter of law hotly disputed in separate litigation, see Canadian St. Regis Band of Mohawk Indians v. State of New York, 146 F.Supp.2d 170, 173-74 (N.D.N.Y.2001), is not binding upon us. See United States Nat’l Bank of Or. v. Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 448, 113 S.Ct. 2173, 124 L.Ed.2d 402 (1993) (“[T]he Court of Appeals acted without any impropriety in refusing to accept what in effect was a stipulation to a question of law.”); Swift & Co. v. Hocking Valley Ry. Co., 243 U.S. 281, 289, 37 S.Ct. 287, 61 L.Ed. 722 (1917) (“If the stipulation is to be treated as an agreement concerning the legal effect of admitted facts, it is obviously inoperative; since the court cannot be controlled by agreement of counsel on a subsidiary question of law. If the stipulation is to be treated as an attempt to agree ‘for the purpose only of reviewing the judgment’ below that what are the facts shall be assumed not to be facts, a moot or fictitious case is presented.” (footnote omitted)); cf. Barr v. Matteo, 355 U.S. 171, 172, 78 S.Ct. 204, 2 L.Ed.2d 179 (1957) (“[A]n advisory opinion cannot be extracted from a federal court by agreement of the parties.”); Weston v. Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth., 78 F.3d 682, 685 (D.C.Cir.1996) (refusing to decide a “hypothetical case” framed by parties’ stipulations to legal conclusions).
In my view, the dispute over the validity of the Conveyances is irrelevant to the outcome of this litigation. Briefly stated, if the Conveyances were invalid, then appellant does not have lawful title to the land and has no standing to challenge the ad valorem tax. But eve.n if the Conveyances were sufficient to support appellant’s claim of title, the land is subject to taxation whether or not it is still within the Reservation. I would affirm without addressing the validity of the Conveyances.
BACKGROUND
In 1791, the State of New York sold a large area of land along the St. Lawrence River to Alexander Macomb. The con*85tract memorializing this sale allowed the State to retain “a tract equal to six miles square, in the vicinity of the Village of St. Regis” as long as that tract was “applied for the use of the Indians” living there. In 1796, with the consent of the federal government, the State entered into a treaty with the Seven Nations of Canada that established that the six miles square tract of land would be dedicated as reservation territory.
Beginning in 1816, the Tribe and the State entered into the Conveyances, a series of treaties pursuant to which the Tribe sold parcels of land located within the Reservation boundaries to the State. Appellant’s property is part of the territory that was sold to the State in 1824 and 1825. Since then, that land has been treated without exception as a large number of privately owned, fee-simple estates. For example, the property in question has been repeatedly purchased and sold by multiple private parties during the past 180 years, until appellant’s husband sold it to her. It has also been subject to an ad valorem tax since at least 1872.
DISCUSSION
Appellant’s central claim on appeal is that her property is immune from taxation by the County of Franklin because, although she has title to the land, it is, notwithstanding the Conveyances, still within the St. Regis Reservation and under tribal jurisdiction. In arguing that she owns the land but that the land is still within the Reservation, she relies upon the concept that has come to be known as “decoupling,” i.e. title to land may be privately owned while the land remains within tribal jurisdiction. In particular, she relies upon Solem v. Bartlett, which stated,
[Ojnly Congress can divest a reservation of its land and diminish its boundaries. Once a block of land is set aside for an Indian Reservation and no matter what happens to the title of individual plots within the area, the entire block retains its reservation status until Congress explicitly indicates otherwise.
465 U.S. 463, 470, 104 S.Ct. 1161, 79 L.Ed.2d 443 (1984). Because Congress established the Tribe’s Reservation in 1796 and has, in appellant’s view, never purported to diminish it, appellant argues that her property must be still within “Indian country” and that it is therefore nontaxable.2
Appellant’s argument contains two fatal flaws. The first flaw is that appellant conceives of decoupling as a doctrine allowing title to all land in Indian reservations to be freely alienable without congressional authority, while reservation boundaries can be altered only with such authority. In her view, therefore, she need not trace her title to an Act of Congress allowing the Tribe to convey the land. However, decoupling occurs only when Congress expressly allows title to land within reservations to be conveyed but fails to authorize a corresponding shrinkage of the particular reservation.3 In other words, as with changes in the boundaries of a reservation, reservation land can become alienable — can become plots of privately owned property — only upon federal authority. See Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, 604, 5 L.Ed. 681 (1823) (refusing to recognize *86land titles originating in grants by Indians to private parties); Penobscot Indian Nation v. Key Bank of Maine, 112 F.3d 538, 548-49 (1st Cir.1997) (noting that “Indian tribes enjoyed the right to possess and occupy lands but not to alienate these lands without the federal government’s approval”); Catawba Indian Tribe of S.C. v. South Carolina, 865 F.2d 1444, 1448 (4th Cir.1989) (“Indian title cannot be alienated except by Act of Congress; a purported conveyance of the possessory right, even if made by a tribe having such title, is void and no title passes.”).
Given her view of decoupling, appellant is content to trace her title solely to the Conveyances, which purported to convey all tribal rights to the land but which appellant views as sufficient only to convey title4 but not jurisdiction. However, as explained above, congressional authority is needed to convey either title or jurisdiction, or both, and her attack on the validity of the Conveyances states that Congress never authorized them to any degree. If that attack were to prevail, therefore, it would be sufficient to defeat the transfer of title as well as jurisdiction.
The second flaw is equally fatal to appellant’s claim. Congress need not shrink the jurisdictional boundaries of a tribal reservation in order to render plots of land within such boundaries taxable by the state. Rather, to render Indian land taxable, Congress need only have “made its intention to do so unmistakably clear,” Cass County, Minn. v. Leech Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, 524 U.S. 103, 110, 118 S.Ct. 1904, 141 L.Ed.2d 90 (1998) (quoting County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakima Indian Nation, 502 U.S. 251, 258, 112 S.Ct. 683, 116 L.Ed.2d 687 (1992)), and such an “unmistakably clear” intention will be inferred where Congress has authorized the alienability of the land in question. See id. at 110-11, 118 S.Ct. 1904 (“We have determined that Congress has manifested such an intent [to authorize taxation of land on an Indian reservation] when it has authorized reservation lands to be allotted in fee to individual Indians, thus making the lands freely alienable and withdrawing them from federal protection.”). In other words, for a plot of reservation land to pass to individual ownership, Congress must authorize the conveyance and that very authorization serves to authorize taxation.5
Therefore, there is a complete factual and legal overlap of the individual title, tribal jurisdiction, and taxability issues. If appellant succeeds in establishing that there was no congressional authorization for the Conveyances, her title is destroyed, and she has no standing to challenge the *87tax.6 See Thompson I, 15 F.3d at 249. But even if she were somehow able to establish congressional action (she doesn’t claim to do so), leaving her with valid title and the Tribe with jurisdiction over the land, she would still lose this litigation because whatever congressional authorization allowed the sale of the individual tracts would have also rendered the land taxable.7
Appellant cannot, therefore, win this case. There are only three possible outcomes: (i) there was congressional authorization for, or ratification of, the Conveyances sufficient to transfer title and alter the Reservation boundaries (jurisdiction) in a corresponding fashion; as a result, appellant has title to the land but it is taxable by the County of Franklin; (ii) somehow, Congress authorized the Conveyances to pass title but not shrink the Reservation boundaries; if so, the land is taxable under Cass County, 524 U.S. at 110-11, 118 S.Ct. 1904; or (iii) the Conveyances were not authorized by Congress to pass title or alter the Reservation boundaries, and, as noted in Thompson I, only the Tribe has standing to challenge the property tax. Thompson I, 15 F.3d at 249. The judgment must, therefore, on any theory, be affirmed.8
In my view, we neither need to nor should resolve the debated issues regarding the validity of the Conveyances. We need not resolve them because they do not affect the outcome of this litigation, as explained above. We should not resolve them because the validity of the Conveyances affects the title of numerous other landowners and the Tribe itself, see Canadian St. Regis Band of Mohawk Indians, 146 F.Supp.2d at 173-74, and should not be determined in litigation in which the stake of these parties in the outcome is obscured. If we were to hold that appellant lacks title, the decision would, as precedent, affect all the present owners whose title is traceable to the Conveyances. Were we to hold that appellant has title, the decision would as precedent prevent the Tribe from asserting title. This is not the occasion to do either.
I therefore concur in affirming the judgment of the district court.

. Judge Van Graafeiland relies upon the parties' agreement as to the validity of appellant’s title to conclude that the land in question must have been validly conveyed in accordance with the Nonintercourse Act See ante at 83 (Van Graafeiland, J.). Judge Sack relies upon the agreement of the parties as to the validity of appellant’s title as a reason not to question [it] sua sponte, post at 88 (Sack, J., dissenting), thereby enabling him to assume that appellant's property is freely alienable while ignoring the logical consequences of his detailed and forceful argument regarding the invalidity of the Conveyances.

. There are other necessary steps in appellant's argument leading to her conclusion— for example, her status as a member of the Tribe — that I need not, and do not, discuss in light of the disposition I favor.

. I therefore disagree with Judge Sack's view that there is no "act” of decoupling. See post at 90 (Sack, J., dissenting). Decoupling occurs only when Congress "acts” to authorize the passage of title without also permitting the shrinking of tribal jurisdiction.

. Appellant's counsel stipulated at oral argument that "her chain of title depends upon the validity of [the Conveyances].”

. In Thompson v. County of Franklin (Thompson I), we reviewed a dismissal of a complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), and therefore assumed the allegations to be true. 15 F.3d 245, 249 (2d Cir.1994). One of those allegations was that appellant held title to the land in question. Without reaching any of the merits, including the validity of appellant’s title, we held that, if there had been a valid decoupling of title and jurisdiction, appellant, like any titleholder of land, had standing to challenge a property tax. See id. at 252-53. Thompson I does not control the outcome here for two reasons.
First, the procedural posture has now changed, and we can no longer assume appellant’s allegations regarding title to be true. Further, as explained in the text, it is now clear that she cannot substantiate her allegations that her title and tribal jurisdiction have been validly decoupled. Second, Thompson I was decided before Cass County, which makes it clear that even if appellant held valid, decoupled title and the land were within the Reservation, it would still be taxable.

. Judge Sack's dissenting opinion avoids this conclusion by assuming the validity of appellant's title, even though his opinion states that title could pass from the Tribe only with congressional authorization, see post at 90 (Sack, J., dissenting), and that the Conveyances, upon which appellant relies for title, see note 4, supra, were not congressionally authorized, see post at 92 (Sack, J., dissenting).

. Judge Sack’s dissenting opinion concludes that Cass County is irrelevant because the actions that rendered appellant's property alienable lacked congressional authority. See post at 95 (Sack, J., dissenting). In his view, the issue thus becomes "not whether ... the land is freely alienable, but-whether it is freely alienable by Act of Congress.” Id. However, this distinction does not exist in Indian law because, as his opinion states, see post at 90 (Sack, J., dissenting), there is no category of alienable Indian lands absent congressional authorization. To hold otherwise would subvert the protective regime Congress established at the beginning of the Republic. Therefore, if appellant’s land is alienable, then it must have received congressional approval pursuant to 25 U.S.C. 177, and either it is not within tribal jurisdiction or Cass County controls. In either case, appellant's land is taxable.

.Judge Sack quibbles with this conclusion on the ground that outcome (iii) would require either a dismissal of the appeal or a remand with instructions to dismiss the complaint. See post at 89 n. 4 (Sack, J., dissenting). In my view, a dismissal would not be appropriate because we clearly have appellate jurisdiction. A remand would be unnecessary because the district court already has dismissed the complaint; an affirmance is therefore all that is necessary.