Statutory Interpretation – Sovereign Immunity

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United States Supreme Court

Case Name: Upper Skagit Indian Tribe v. Lundgren

Case No.: 17-387

Focus: Statutory Interpretation – Sovereign Immunity

The Upper Skagit Indian Tribe purchased a roughly 40-acre plot of land and then commissioned a boundary survey. The survey convinced the Tribe that about an acre of its land lay on the other side of a boundary fence between its land and land owned by Sharline and Ray Lundgren. The Lundgrens filed a quiet title action in Washington state court, invoking the doctrines of adverse possession and mutual acquiescence, but the Tribe asserted sovereign immunity from the suit. Ultimately, the State Supreme Court rejected the Tribe’s immunity claim and ruled for the Lundgrens, reasoning that, under County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 502 U. S. 251, tribal sovereign immunity does not apply to in rem suits.

Yakima addressed not the scope of tribal sovereign immunity, but a question of statutory interpretation of the Indian General Allotment Act of 1887. That Act authorized the President to allot parcels of reservation land to individual tribal members and directed the United States eventually to issue fee patents to the allottees as private individuals. In 1934, Congress reversed course but made no attempt to withdraw the lands already conveyed. As a result, Indian reservations sometimes contain both trust land held by the United States and fee-patented land held by private parties. Yakima concerned the tax consequences of this intermixture. This Court had previously held that §6 of the General Allotment Act could no longer be read as allowing States to impose in personam taxes on transactions between Indians on fee-patented land within a reservation. Moe v. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Flathead Reservation, 425 U. S. 463, 479–481. The Court reached a different conclusion in Yakima with respect to in rem state taxes, holding that the state collection of property taxes on fee-patented land within reservations was still allowed under §6. 502 U. S., at 265. In short, Yakima sought only to interpret a relic of a statute in light of a distinguishable precedent; it resolved nothing about the law of sovereign immunity.

Acknowledging this, the Lundgrens now ask the Court to affirm on an alternative, common-law ground: that the Tribe cannot assert sovereign immunity because this suit relates to immovable property located in Washington State, purchased by the Tribe in the same manner as a private individual. Because this alternative argument did not emerge until late in this case, the Washington Supreme Court should address it in the first instance.

Vacated and Remanded

Dissenting: THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ALITO, J., joined.

Concurring: ROBERTS, C. J., filed a concurring opinion, in which KENNEDY, J., joined.
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