water rights

Klamath Tribes Challenge Orders Based on Secret Agreement Between Irrigator Group and State

Matthew Campbell

On November 19, 2025, the Klamath Tribes filed a motion to amend their petition in the Circuit Court of Klamath County. The amended petition seeks to reverse recent illegal orders that replaced a long-time administrative law judge in the Klamath Basin Adjudication (KBA) on the heels of a secret deal cut between the Oregon State Office of Administrative Hearings and certain water users in the Upper Klamath Basin. Here is the amended petition:

2025-12-04 Klamath Tribes Am Pet for Relief from Non-Final Order or Pet for Writ of MandamusDownload

The KBA is a several-decades-old lawsuit pending in the Circuit Court of Klamath County. It is quantifying the federal reserved water rights of the Klamath Tribes in the Klamath River Basin. The KBA involves administrative hearings conducted by the Office of Administrative Hearings, which made initial determinations on the Tribes’ water rights claims. Extensive proceedings were conducted at the Office from 2006 to 2012, and the Klamath County Circuit Court recently returned cases there for additional proceedings.

Robison on Native Nations and Water Compacts

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Jason Robison has posted “Beyond Binary Co-Sovereignty: Native Nations & Water Compacts,” forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and former Harvard Law School Dean James Landis published in 1925 the seminal work on the U.S. Constitution’s Compact Clause. The article was, by definition, about co-sovereignty within the United States, though only in a binary sense. While shaping indelibly interstate and federal-state relations, North America’s original sovereigns, Native nations, were not visible within the influential piece. So, too, with the approximately two dozen compacts later formed to apportion water from rivers running across and along state lines, compacts acknowledging Native nations and their water (property) rights only at the margins, if at all. Revisiting Frankfurter and Landis’s seminal work exactly one century later, this Article advocates for moving beyond the binary conception of co-sovereignty apparent in that piece and entrenched in the suite of compacts created in its wake. Tracking Native nations’ growing calls for inclusion in transboundary water management, the Article advocates for these co-sovereigns to be respected as just that—sovereigns—and afforded opportunities for direct representation on compact commissions beside their state and federal counterparts. Food for thought is offered about potential forms and processes for this indigenization, all of which aim at the Article’s ultimate goal: further socializing and institutionalizing tripartite co-sovereignty.

D.C. Circuit Affirms Rejection of Crow Allottees Challenge to Water Rights Settlement

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the opinion in Crow v. Dept. of the Interior.

Briefs here.

Ninth Circuit Reverses Gila River/San Carlos Apache Water Rights Victory

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the opinion in Gila River Indian Community v. Schoubroek.

Here are available briefs:

San Carlos Apache Answer Brief.pdfDownload
Reply Brief.pdfDownload

Lower court materials here.

Agua Caliente Water Rights Settlement

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here:

Agua_Caliente_Water_Settlement_Agreement.pdfDownload

More details here.

Jason Robison on Arizona v. Navajo Nation

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Jason Robison has published “Relational River: Arizona v. Navajo Nation & the Colorado” in the UCLA Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

It is not every day the U.S. Supreme Court adjudicates a case about the water needs and rights of one of the Colorado River Basin’s thirty tribal nations and the trust relationship shared by that sovereign with the United States. Yet just that happened in Arizona v. Navajo Nation in June 2023. As explored in this Article, the Colorado is a relational river relied upon by roughly forty million people, reeling from climate change for nearly a quarter century, and subject to management rules expiring and requiring extensive, politically charged renegotiation by 2027. Along this relational river, Arizona v. Navajo Nation was a milestone, illuminating water colonialism and environmental injustice on the country’s largest Native American reservation, and posing pressing questions about what exactly the trust relationship entails vis-à-vis the essence of life. Placing Arizona v. Navajo Nation in historical context, the Article synthesizes the case with an eye toward the future. Moving forward along the relational river, the trust relationship should be understood and honored for what it is, a sovereign trust, and fulfilled within the policy sphere through a host of measures tied, directly and indirectly, to the post-2026 management rules. Further, if judicial enforcement of the trust relationship is necessary, tribal sovereigns in the basin (and elsewhere) should not view the Court’s 5–4 decision as the death knell for water-related breach of trust claims, but rather as a guide for bringing cognizable future claims and reorienting breach of trust analysis.

Wind River Water Forum, April 26, 2025

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

NARF Launches The Headwaters Report

Matthew Campbell

The Headwaters Report – is a new digital blog site, bulletin, and source for Tribal water law information and resources. The Headwaters Report presents accessible information on foundational Tribal water law concepts and practices as well as current and emerging water-related issues.

    The first article focuses on the Clean Water Act, a 50-year-old law that, among other things, allows Tribes to assert regulatory jurisdiction over water quality and activities that impact water quality within reservation boundaries. In our next Report update, we plan to address the changes the Trump Administration is attempting to make to the Clean Water Act and how that may affect Tribal Nations.

    In the Report you will also find several slide decks on Tribal water rights information, including one on the basics of Tribal water rights, general stream adjudications, and Indian water rights settlements. We intend The Headwaters Report to act not only as a clearinghouse for Tribal water law and policy information, but as a place to bring questions and to get guidance.

    Tenth Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Effort to Relitigate San Juan Basin Water Rights

    Matthew L.M. Fletcher

    Here is the unpublished opinion in Clark v. Haaland.

    Briefs:

    Opening Brief

    Federal Brief

    Navajo Brief

    New Mexico Brief 

    Reply

    Two New Papers by Dylan Hedden-Nicely

    Matthew L.M. Fletcher

    Journal Water:  Water Governance in an Era of Climate Change: A Model to Assess the Shifting Irrigation Demand and Its Effect on Water Management in the Western United States

    https://doi.org/10.3390/w16141963

    Harvard Environmental Law Review: Rebalancing Winters: Indigenous Water Rights and Climate Change in the Western United States

    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4932971