From ICT:

The federal government’s recent actions involving its authority to make decisions on acquiring land in trust for tribal gaming purposes may inadvertently threaten the authority and duty of the secretary of the Interior Department to take land into trust for Indian tribes.

On April 29, the D.C. Circuit decided an innocuous case involving the secretary of Interior’s decision to take land into trust for the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians (also known as the Gun Lake Band). It was the third such opinion in recent years involving Michigan Potawatomi Indian tribes, each brought by well-funded citizens groups opposing Indian gaming. The suits were mere harassment suits, intended to delay rather than prevent the opening of the Potawatomi gaming operations. Each of the suits brought similar claims.

Of import, one claim was that Section 5 of the Indian Reorganization Act, the statute that authorizes the secretary to take land into trust for Indian tribes, was an unconstitutional delegation of congressional authority. The first two D.C. Circuit panel decisions (2006 and 2007), involving the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians, rejected the constitutional challenge to Section 5 without much discussion or dissent. In fact, since 1995, at least three other federal appellate circuits have rejected the same kind of challenge to the statute, so this is unsurprising.

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