The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decided on Thursday that states should not and cannot use negotiations related to the launch of a given tribal casino as a way to object to a federal government resolution to recognize an Indian tribe and grant it land.
The 11-judge panel ruled that states can express their disapproval in a different process and have up to six years to do this.
Joe Webster, a partner with Hobbs Straus Dean & Walker, known to be a Washington-based law firm, commented that the Thursday decision was definitely an important one, as it cleared out the doubts tribes had concerning the status of their land.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision came after the Big Lagoon Rancheria, one of the federally-recognized California-based tribes, claimed that the state had failed to negotiate with the tribe the potential launch of a Las Vegas-styled hotel and casino resort “in good faith.”
California argued that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had not complied with a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling when recognizing the Big Lagoon Rancheria and had not been authorized to take an 11-acre site into trust for the tribe. According to the aforementioned ruling, land could be taken into trust by federal officials only on behalf of nations recognized before 1934.
However, the state pointed out that the Big Lagoon Rancheria was listed as a federally-recognized entity in 1979.
Circuit Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote that if California had been allowed to “attack collaterally” the decision made by the BIA to take into trust the above-mentioned 11-acre site, this would have cast doubts on thousands of acres of land taken into trust on behalf of a number of federally-recognized Indian tribes.
The Thursday ruling makes it possible for the Big Lagoon Rancheria to proceed with its project for the construction of a Las Vegas-styled casino. The proposal only needs to receive one final approval from the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
The tribe has been pushing for the authorization of a casino since 2007. Back in 2010, a U.S. district court decided that California had violated the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The state appealed the ruling in 2014 and two years later, a three-judge panel ruled in favor of California. The Thursday decision reiterated the one issued in 2010.
