Here is today’s order list.
Cert stage briefs here.
Here are the relevant materials in Wolfchild v. Redwood County (D. Minn.):
208 Lower Sioux Community Motion for Rule 11 Sanctions
Materials on the court’s dismissal of the claim are here.
Here is the order in Wolfchild v. Redwood County (D. Minn.):
196 DCT Order Granting Motion to Dismiss
An excerpt:
The Court finds no basis upon which to distinguish this case from those asserted in Sherrill or Stockbridge. It is clear that Plaintiffs’ claims flow from the 1863 Act. It is also clear that the land at issue here was sold to third parties no later than 1895. See Wolfchild IX, 731 F.3d at 1293. Plaintiffs’ claims are thus like those described in Stockbridge: “Indian land claims asserted generations after an alleged dispossession that are inherently disruptive of state and local governance and the settled expectations of current landowners and are subject to dismissal on the basis of laches, acquiescence, and impossibility.” Id. 756 F.3d at 165.
There is no language in Sherrill or Stockbridge that would limit the holdings of those decisions to claims based on aboriginal title.
Based on the particular characteristics and history of the claims at issue here, the Court finds that Plaintiffs’ claims are equitably barred. Application of the equitable bar set forth inSherrill does not require a balancing of equities between the parties. Instead, the equitable bar focuses on Plaintiffs’ delay in seeking relief, and the disruption that would result to settled and justified expectations regarding land ownership. Sherrill, 544 U.S. at 216‐17, 221(finding that “the Oneidasʹ long delay in seeking equitable relief against New York or its local units, and developments in the city of Sherrill spanning several generations, evoke the doctrines of laches, acquiescence, and impossibility, and render inequitable the piecemeal shift in governance this suit seeks unilaterally to initiate”).
Briefs are here.
Here are the materials so far in Wolfchild v. Redwood County (D. Minn.):
156 Redwood County Motion to Dismiss
164 Landowners Motion to Dismiss
165 Lower Sioux Community Motion to Dismiss
Complaint here.
Press Release here.
The lawsuit speaks of the Minnesota 1862 Sioux revolt where Congress later helped to regain lands for the Mdewakanton who saved settlers and did not participate in the revolt. A never repealed February 1863 Act instructed the Secretary of Interior to set aside about 12 square miles of reservation land for the loyal Mdewakanton’s “for ever.” Because of white-settler hostility, the loyal Mdewakanton were not able to settle on those lands. But, the United States, although it never had the legal authority to transfer title, did so and sold the land to subsequent possessors. Thus, all subsequent land owners never had clear title to those Indian lands.