Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1991

Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak

501 U.S. 775 | 111 S. Ct. 2578 | 115 L. Ed. 2d 686 | 1991 U.S. LEXIS 3637

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Takeaway

In short, tribal sovereignty and a general grant of federal jurisdiction do not, without more, overcome a State’s immunity from suit in federal court.

Background

Alaska enacted a program promising annual payments to certain Native village governments. Acting on the state attorney general’s view that the program violated Alaska’s equal protection guarantee, the responsible commissioner expanded it to all unincorporated communities. The Native villages received less than they would have under the original program. After the legislature replaced the statute, the villages sued the commissioner on federal equal protection grounds, seeking the unpaid amounts.

The district court dismissed the suit as barred by state sovereign immunity. The Ninth Circuit reversed, ultimately holding that Alaska had no immunity from suits by Indian tribes. The Supreme Court granted review.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether a State retains sovereign immunity from a federal-court suit brought by an Indian tribe.

Holding

Yes. Absent consent, a State is immune from a tribal suit seeking payment from the State.

Reasoning

The Eleventh Amendment’s words do not exhaust state sovereign immunity. Under the Court’s precedents, the States entered the constitutional system with immunity from federal-court suits unless they consented to suit expressly or surrendered immunity in the plan of the constitutional convention.

That immunity applies to suits by sovereigns as well as individuals. The Court had previously held that a foreign sovereign could not sue an unconsenting State, so a tribe’s own sovereign status did not settle the question.

The States surrendered immunity to suits by sister States and by the United States, but the Court found no comparable surrender for Indian tribes. States made a mutual concession to one another in the constitutional compact; tribes were not parties to that compact and did not surrender their own immunity from state suits.

Issue #2

Whether 28 U.S.C. § 1362 permits tribes to overcome a State’s sovereign immunity.

Holding

No. Section 1362 neither delegates the United States’ ability to sue States nor unmistakably abrogates state sovereign immunity.

Reasoning

Section 1362 grants federal district courts jurisdiction over recognized tribes’ federal-law claims. Its language resembles the general federal-question jurisdiction statute and does not unmistakably state an intent to subject unconsenting States to suit. A grant of jurisdiction, by itself, does not remove a State’s immunity defense.

The Court had interpreted § 1362 to let tribes bypass the Tax Injunction Act in certain suits, giving them access to federal court comparable to the United States’ access in that respect. But that decision removed a statutory obstacle; it did not establish that Congress had transferred the United States’ exemption from state immunity to tribes.

Nor did the older precedent invoked by the villages make § 1362 an abrogation. That precedent concerned a State’s implied consent to suit by entering a federally regulated activity, not Congress’s power to abrogate immunity. The Court reversed and left the villages’ request for injunctive relief for the Ninth Circuit to consider on remand.

Dissents

Justice Blackmun

Reasoning

Justice Blackmun, joined by Justices Marshall and Stevens, rejected the majority’s broad constitutional doctrine of state sovereign immunity: in his view, the Eleventh Amendment did not bar this federal-rights suit by tribes. He also read § 1362, in light of Congress’s policy of tribal self-determination, to authorize tribes to bring claims for monetary relief that the United States could have brought on their behalf.