Here:
Saginaw Cert Petition and Appendix- Filed
Questions presented:
For more than sixty years, the National Labor Relations Board correctly declined to exercise jurisdiction over tribal operations on tribal lands. But in recent years, the Board has belatedly asserted the extraordinary power to regulate the on-reservation activities of sovereign Indian tribes, precipitating a three-way circuit split in the process. Nothing in the text of the National Labor Relations Act changed in that interval; it contains no language granting the Board authority over Indian tribes. Nor has the language of various Indian treaties, like those between the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe and the United States, changed; they continue to recognize the Tribe’s authority to exclude non-members. And despite the Board’s complete lack of expertise in Indian law, the Board now dictates that some tribal operations are subject to the NLRA and others are not based on its evaluation of the centrality of certain functions to tribal sovereignty and subtle differences in treaty language.
This case presents two questions, both of which have divided the courts of appeals:
(1) Does the National Labor Relations Act abrogate the inherent sovereignty of Indian tribes and thus apply to tribal operations on Indian lands?
(2) Does the National Labor Relations Act abrogate the treaty-protected rights of Indian tribes to make their own laws and establish the rules under which they permit outsiders to enter Indian lands?
Lower court materials here.
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