SCOTUSBlog: Supreme Court to hear gaming land dispute

Monday, April 23, 2012  

"On Tuesday, April 24, the Court will hear arguments in a case challenging the federal government’s decision to put into trust land purchased by an Indian Tribe in Michigan, in order to facilitate the Tribe’s building of a casino. The case raises questions of sovereign immunity, Indian law, and administrative law.

David Patchak, the respondent in Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians v. Patchak, Nos. 11-246 & 11-247, owns land in southwestern Michigan. One of his neighbors is a Tribe of Pottawatomi Indians generally referred to as the Gun Lake Band. After the Band received official recognition from the federal government in 1993, it purchased some land near Mr. Patchak’s home, in the hopes of building a casino. As part of that effort, it asked the federal government to take title to the land and hold it in trust for the Tribe, a move that facilitated the development of the casino by effectively taking the land out of the jurisdiction of the state and local governments (although the Tribe’s right to run a casino is still regulated by federal law).

Mr. Patchak subsequently sued the federal government under the Administrative Procedures Act, alleging that the Tribe did not qualify to have its land taken into trust and seeking an order requiring the federal government to give the property back to the Tribe (thereby restoring local jurisdiction over the casino project). The federal government and the Tribe objected on two grounds: (1) the suit was barred by the federal government’s sovereign immunity as a consequence of the federal Quiet Title Act; and (2) Mr. Patchak did not have “prudential standing” to object to the legality of the trust transfer. The D.C. Circuit eventually sided with Mr. Patchak, and the federal government and the Tribe successfully petitioned for certiorari."

Get the Story:
Argument preview: Seeking to undo casino land deal (SCOTUSBlog 4/20)

DC Circuit Decision:
Patchak v. Salazar (January 21, 2011)

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Anti-casino group submits brief in Supreme Court land case (3/30)