The California Court of Appeals (4th Dist., Div. 2) decided Salinas v. Barron, another in the series of cases involving the Pechanga Band’s various membership disputes. This case involves the disenrollment of the plaintiffs in LaMere v. Superior Court, 131 Cal. App. 4th 1059 (2005).
From the opinion:
In LaMere, the plaintiffs were members of the Pechanga Band of Temecula Luiseo Mission Indians (the Band); the defendants were members of the Band’s enrollment committee. The defendants had allegedly commenced proceedings to disenroll the plaintiffs, in violation of the Band’s own laws. This court held that the trial court lacked jurisdiction of the dispute.
The plaintiffs in this case are more or less the same people as in LaMere; they have now been disenrolled. Once again, they allege that they were disenrolled in violation of the Band’s own laws. This time, however, instead of suing the members of the enrollment committee, they are suing a group of private individuals who allegedly instigated the disenrollment proceedings for the ulterior purpose of increasing defendants’ own share of the Band’s gaming revenues. Plaintiffs assert standard state-law causes of action against those individuals — interference with prospective economic advantage, defamation, and false-light invasion of privacy. All of these causes of action, however, with one minor exception, are premised on the alleged fact that plaintiffs are rightfully members of the Band and have been improperly disenrolled. For example, plaintiffs allege that the way that defendants interfered with their prospective economic advantage was by improperly disenrolling them and thereby disqualifying them from sharing in the Band’s gaming revenues and the other economic benefits of membership.
We will hold that the crucial factor in LaMere was not the identity of the defendants; rather, it was the nature of the issue to be decided. Because an Indian tribe has the sovereign power to determine its own membership, and because state courts have no jurisdiction to interfere with tribal sovereignty, a California state court simply has no jurisdiction to decide for itself who is and is not a member of a tribe. It must accept the tribe’s own membership determinations as conclusive. Moreover, to the extent that plaintiffs’ causes of action stand or fall on the premise that plaintiffs were improperly disenrolled, the trial court properly sustained a demurrer.
Turtle Talk 