Here:
KG Urban Motion to Expedite CA1 Appeal
Mass Response to Motion to Expedite
Lower court materials are here and here and here.
News coverage here, h/t Pechanga.
equal protection
More Materials in KG Urban v. Patrick
Federal Court Affirms Mass. Gaming Law Granting Preference to Tribes
Here is the lengthy opinion.
No bones about it. This is a scary opinion delving at length into the constitutional infirmities of the political status classification doctrine first articulated in Morton v. Mancari. This judge would apply strict scrutiny but for the Mancari precedent (one he finds weak at best).
A case to watch to be sure, since KG Urban no doubt smells blood in the water. And Massachusetts will no doubt defend this law diligently.
Update: Paul Clement represents the plaintiffs.
News coverage here, via Pechanga.
Briefs and other materials are here.
Important Michigan Tribal Court Decision re: Civil Rights, Judicial Immunity, and the Awarding of Attorney Fees
Here is the decision in Joseph Martin v. Little River Band of Ottawa Indians from the Little River Band Tribal Court (Judge Bill Brott, sitting pro tem): Martin v. LRB.
Update on Miccosukee Tribe’s Ongoing Everglades Case
Here are two recent orders in Miccosukee Tribe v. United States (S.D. Fla.), the upshot being that an equal protection claim against the federal government has survived a motion to dismiss:
Paul Spruhan on the Canadian Indian Free Passage Right
Paul Spruhan (Navajo Nation AG’s Office) has published, “The Canadian Indian Free Passage Right: The Last Stronghold of Explicit Race Restriction in United States Immigration Law” in the North Dakota Law Review. Paul continues his long string of outstanding articles in legal history and Indian law. This one should be of special interest to immigration specialists as well.
Here is an excerpt:
[T]his article reviews the tangled legal history of the Canadian Indian free passage right to answer the question why such a racial restriction continues to exist today. Part II-A discusses the origins of Indians’ free passage right in treaties between the United States and Great Britain, and a congressional statute passed in 1928. Part II-B, through an analysis of cases and administrative policies, shows how officials struggled to define “Canadian Indian” under the 1928 act, conceptualizing Indian status at first as a “political” status defined by Canadian law and then as a “racial” status defined by American law. Part II-C then discusses the adoption of the blood quantum restriction as part of a comprehensive overhaul of American immigration law in 1952, and the apparent reasons for why Congress adopted a half-blood rule.In section III, the article discusses problems arising after 1952 for Canadian Indians, like Peter Roberts, who must prove their amount of Indian blood to invoke their passage right. Section IV discusses the implications of the explicit racial restriction for federal Indian law and immigration law. It notes that both are premised on congressional “plenary power,” historically outside constitutional review by the United States Supreme Court. It discusses how the Supreme Court, since the 1970s, has reviewed the constitutionality of Indian legislation under equal protection principles, but has not done so for immigration legislation premised on race. Contrasting the current state of racial legislation under Congress’s powers to legislate in Indian affairs with its power to legislate concerning immigration, the article suggests that the blood quantum restriction for Canadian Indian free passage may present an opportunity to distinguish definitions in federal Indian law that use blood quantum and to challenge prior precedent exempting immigration legislation from judicial scrutiny.
Bethany Berger on Equal Protection and Federal Indian Law
Bethany Berger has posted “Reconciling Equal Protection and Federal Indian Law” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In this essay for a festschrift in celebration of Philip Frickey and his work, I show how equal protection and federal Indian law can be reconciled without succumbing to what Professor Frickey has called the seduction of artificial coherence. Federal Indian policies increasingly face arguments that, in providing special treatment for individuals and groups defined in part by descent from indigenous tribes, they violate the requirement of equal protection before the law. I argue that such arguments ignore the congruence of federal Indian policy and equal protection as a matter of constitutional norms, constitutional history, and constitutional text. Federal Indian policies at their best undo the results of defining indigenous peoples as inferior racial groups rather than sovereigns entitled to political and property rights. This consistency between civil rights and protection of tribal rights was recognized by the framers of the fourteenth amendment, and is reflected in both judicial decisions and historical developments in federal Indian policy. American constitutional principles, in other words, support both equal protection and tribal rights, and militate against any false consistency that would undermine the principles of equality and respect on which both are based.
Ninth Circuit Rejects Equal Protection Challenge to Indian Country Criminal Sentencing
Though one judge did strongly criticize the sentence, for a separate reason. Here is the opinion in U.S. v. Lamere (unpublished), and a separate concurrence.
Flandreau v. South Dakota IGRA Case
Here are the materials in Flandreau Sioux v. South Dakota, out of the District of South Dakota.
flandreau-v-south-dakota-dct-order
south-dakota-motion-to-dismiss
Here is the tribe’s claim:
Ann Tweedy on Conceptions of Sex-Based Equality under Tribal Law
Ann Tweedy has posted the abstract of her fine paper “Conceptions of Sex-Based Equal Protection under Tribal Law: Broad-Based Prohibitions Against Discrimination, Context-Specific Protections, and Sex-Based Distinctions” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This article undertakes a broad-based survey of tribal laws that pertain to sex-based classifications, focusing primarily on laws that prohibit sex discrimination. The sources relied on include the tribal codes, constitutions, and cases available online from the National Tribal Justice Resource Center; cases included in the Indian Law Reporter; the University of Washington’s 1988 microfiche compilation of tribal codes and constitutions; the decisions of the Northwest Intertribal Courts; the limited tribal law resources available on Westlaw; and occasionally legal resources downloaded from the websites of individual tribes and from other miscellaneous websites.
Turtle Talk 
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