Here is the opinion in Yazzie v. EPA. Here is the opinion in Hopi Tribe v. EPA. The Yazzie opinion is the lead opinion and has more details.
Materials in the Yazzie appeal are here. Materials in the Hopi appeal are here (some of the Yazzie briefs are here, too).
Here.
Here is the opinion in Desert Water Agency v. Dept. of the Interior.
An excerpt from the court’s summary:
The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal for lack of standing and ripeness of a complaint brought by the Desert Water Agency (“DWA”), a political subdivision of the State of California, against the United States Department of the Interior and its Bureau of Indian Affairs, challenging a federal regulation that DWA believed might preempt certain taxes and fees DWA assessed against non-Indians who leased lands within an Indian reservation.
New federal regulation 25 C.F.R. § 162.017 concerns taxes applied to leases approved on Indian lands to third parties. DWA provides water supplies and water services to businesses and residences in Riverside County, California, and charges fees and taxes to non-Indians who lease land from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians within the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation.
The panel held that § 162.017 did not purport to change existing law, and therefore, did not itself operate to preempt DWA’s charges, and did not command DWA to modify its behavior by doing or refraining from doing anything. The panel concluded that DWA lacked standing because it had not suffered a cognizable injury at the hands of the Department of the Interior.
Briefs:
Lower court materials here.
Here is the opinion in Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians v. Coachella Valley Water District:
An excerpt:
The Coachella Valley Water District (“CVWD”) and the Desert Water Agency (“DWA”) (collectively, the “water agencies”) bring an interlocutory appeal of the district court’s grant of partial summary judgment in favor of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians (the “Tribe”) and the United States. The judgment declares that the United States impliedly reserved appurtenant water sources, including groundwater, when it created the Tribe’s reservation in California’s arid Coachella Valley. We agree. In affirming, we recognize that there is no controlling federal appellate authority addressing whether the reserved rights doctrine applies to groundwater. However, because we conclude that it does, we hold that the Tribe has a reserved right to groundwater underlying its reservation as a result of the purpose for which the reservation was established.
Here. All aspects of the substantive holding are retained. This new order adds analysis on a couple of issues (recoupment and the State’s futility argument). No word yet on the court’s response to the request for rehearing en banc.
View previous coverage here and here and here.
En banc stage briefs:
Washington Rehearing/En Banc Petition
Idaho and Montana Amicus Brief
Klamath Critical Habitat Landowners Amicus Brief
Panel materials here.
Here are the briefs in United States v. Bearcomesout:
An excerpt from the opening brief:
Because the Northern Cheyenne Constitution cedes almost unfettered authority to the federal government, Ms. Bearcomesout’s prior conviction in Tribal Court bars subsequent federal prosecution in U.S. District Court as a violation of the Double Jeopardy clause. What is more, the frequency of litigation attacking identical and successive prosecutions says something about the inherent unfairness and counter intuitive legal analysis imposed on what seems to be a simple constitutional prohibition. Perhaps it is time to eschew the ‘separate sovereign’ concept altogether; because the harm it is intended to proscribe is hardly served by current separate sovereigns doctrine. See Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle, 579 U.S ___, 136 S.Ct. 1863, 1877 (2016) (Ginsberg, J., concurring).
Here are the briefs:
Guidiville Rancheria Opening Brief
Oral argument video here.
Lower court materials here.
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