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Court of Appeal:
Tribal Sovereign Immunity Bars Questioning Contract
Third District Says Court Cannot Consider Validity of City’s Sale of Airport to Modoc Nation
By a MetNews Staff Writer
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—Los Angeles Public Library Above is a photo taken in 1945 at the Tule Lake Relocation Center, an internment camp. |
A trial court was powerless to set aside a city’s sale of its airport to a Native American tribe, even if the deal was arranged through secret meetings of the City Council in violation of the Brown Act, in light of the doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity, the Third District Court of Appeal has held.
Modoc Nation, a federally recognized tribe headquartered in Oklahoma, wanted the airfield in the sparsely populated city of Tulelake, in Modoc County, near the Oregon border, to reclaim former tribal land. Seeking to set aside the sale is the Tule Lake Committee.
The airfield is in the middle of what was an internment camp during World War II. The committee is comprised of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated there or are decedents of detainees.
“[T]he disputed property has historical and cultural significance for both the Committee and Nation,” Justice Stacy E. Boulware Eurie observed her decedents unpublished opinion, filed Tuesday.
The purchase was made in 2018 for $17,500 and litigation was brought in 2000. Modoc Superior Court Judge Wendy Dier on March 13 of last year awarded judgment to the Modoc Nation.
Committee’s Contention
The committee argued in its opening brief on appeal:
“If the principle of tribal sovereign immunity could insulate the transfer in question from all court review, then any Indian tribe anywhere could defy all regulation of property, even that remote from its reservation and not subject to a trust application, and cause untold mischief, simply by purchasing it. There is no support for such an expansive application of the judicially-created principle of tribal sovereign immunity.
“Even if this Court were to conclude that tribal sovereign immunity applies to the sale in question, it should then conclude that the Tribe is neither a necessary nor indispensable party to this action seeking equitable relief on a question of paramount public interest.”
Boulware Eurie’s Opinion
In her opinion affirming the judgment, Boulware Eurie said:
“As a general rule, native Indian tribes recognized by the federal government are immune from state court jurisdiction. Immunity extends to entities that are arms of the tribes but does not extend to tribally chartered corporations that are completely independent of the tribe or to tribal officials acting outside the bounds of their lawful authority. Nor does it extend to members of the tribe just because of their status as members. The doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity is a creature of federal common law.”
She noted that “our Supreme Court has made clear that the doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity applies to suits arising from a tribe’s off-reservation contractual and commercial activities,” and declared:
“The purchase of an airport by means of a written contract is clearly a commercial or contractual activity. Thus, Nation is immune from any lawsuit arising from its purchase of the airport from the City. As the Committee’s lawsuit against Nation seeks to void the purchase, the doctrine of sovereign immunity applies here.”
Indispensable Party
Dier had ruled that the tribe was an indispensable party. Boulware Eurie wrote:
“When the trial court decided the matter in 2023, Nation clearly had a cognizable interest in its 2018 purchase of the airport, even if Nation never had ‘legal possession,’ as the Committee contends….[T]he Committee has not persuaded us that the trial court abused its discretion in determining that Nation was an indispensable party.”
The case is Tule Lake Committee v. Follis, C098505.
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