Turtle Talk

Here:

Gould v. Cayuga Cert Petition

Lower court materials here.

Questions presented:

I. Whether the New York State Court of Appeals in its 4-3 decision in Cayuga Indian Nation of New York v. Gould, 14 N.Y.3d 614 (2010), properly interpreted federal law on a matter it believed the United States Supreme Court had not yet addressed in holding that two parcels of land purchased by a successor to the historic Cayuga Indian Nation in 2003 and 2005 were exempt from New York’s cigarette sales and excise taxes after two hundred years of non-Indian ownership and governance.

II. Whether in that decision the New York Court of Appeals properly held both that (i) the Cayuga Indian Nation possessed a federal reservation pursuant to the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua despite the fact that the Cayuga Indian Nation had ceded all of its land to New York State in 1789; and (ii) the United States did not subsequently disestablish any purported federal reservation.

When it rains, it pours, and it’s a veritable hurricane in New York right now.