Turtle Talk

A divided Minnesota Supreme Court (4-3, at least on the jurisdiction question) held in Swenson v. Nickaboine that the state worker’s comp statute applies to an on-reservation, Indian-owned business where the worker in question was a non-Indian.

Here is an excerpt from the dissent:

The majority holds that Minnesota had subject matter jurisdiction based on 40 U.S.C. § 3172.  But we held in Tibbetts v. Leech Lake Reservation Business Committee, 397 N.W.2d 883, 888 (Minn. 1986), that in section 3172, Congress did not subject the tribe to jurisdiction in Minnesota courts.  The majority distinguishes Tibbetts because that case involved a workers‟ compensation claim brought by a tribal member against a tribe; whereas this case involves an injured worker who is not a tribal member and an employer that is owned by a tribal member but is not a tribal corporation.  But holding that Congress did not waive the sovereign immunity of the tribe in section 3172, as we did in Tibbetts, does not provide a basis for the majority‟s conclusion that Congress, in section 3172, vested subject matter jurisdiction in the state to enforce its workers‟ compensation laws.  In my view, our discussion in  Tibbetts supports the opposite result on the jurisdictional question.