Indian Trust

Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band v. Patchak and Salazar v. Patchak (Consolidated)

Issues

1. Whether the Quiet Title Act preserves sovereign immunity in challenges brought against federal Indian trust lands when the action does not claim personal title to the land.

2. Whether a private claimant who alleges injuries, derived from the operation of a gaming facility on Indian trust lands, has prudential standing to sue under the Indian Reorganization Act.

 

The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of the Pottawatomi Indians (“the Band”) requested that the Secretary of the Interior take certain lands in trust under the Indian Reorganization Act in order to allow the tribe to operate a casino under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. David Patchak, a nearby resident, sued to block the land transfer. The district court dismissed his suit for lack of prudential standing to sue. The court of appeals reversed, and further held that under the Administrative Procedures Act the federal government had expressly disclaimed sovereign immunity. On appeal, the Petitioners—both the federal government and the Band—argue that Patchak’s claim is blocked by the government’s sovereign immunity, invoked by the Quiet Title Act, in claims brought to divest the government of Indian trust lands. In addition, Petitioners contend that Patchak’s interests in the suit do not fall within the zone of interests of the operative statute—the Indian Reorganization Act—and thus Patchak lacks prudential standing. Patchak argues that because his claim challenges agency action under the Administrative Procedures Act, it falls outside the Quiet Title Act and the sovereign immunity invocation. Patchak contends that his interest in the land’s use falls within the IRA’s zone of interests and establishes prudential standing. The Supreme Court’s decision in the case will resolve a standing circuit split on whether the Quiet Title Act applies to cases in which the plaintiff’s interest in divesting the title is something other than a claim of ownership to the land.

Questions as Framed for the Court by the Parties

1. Whether the Quiet Title Act and its reservation of the sovereign immunity in suits involving "trust or restricted Indian lands" apply to all suits concerning land in which the "claims an interest," 28 U.S.C. § 2409a(a), as the Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have held, or whether they apply only when the plaintiff claims title to the land, as the D.C. Circuit held.

Whether 5 U.S.C. 702 waives the sovereign immunity of the United States from a suit challenging its title to lands that it holds in trust for an Indian Tribe.

2. Whether prudential standing to sue under federal law can be based on either (i) the plaintiff’s ability to "police" an agency's compliance with the law, as held by the D.C. Circuit but rejected by the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Circuits, or (ii) interests protected by a different federal statute than the one on which suit is based, as held by the D.C. Circuit but rejected by the Federal Circuit.

Whether a private individual who alleges injuries resulting from the operation of a gaming facility on Indian trust land has prudential standing to challenge the decision of the Secretary of the Interior to take title to that land in trust, on the ground that the decision was not authorized by the Indian Reorganization Act, ch. 576, 48 Stat. 984.

The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of the Pottawatomi Indians (“the Band”), a federally-recognized tribe, owned 147 acres of land, known as the Bradley Tract, in Wayland Township, Michigan. See Patchak v. Salazar, 632 F.3d. 702, 703 (D.C. Cir.

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