Law Article: Another look at Tohono O'odham Nation casino

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has required the Secretary of the Interior to reconsider a decision to accept an unincorporated parcel surrounded by the City of Glendale into trust for the Tohono O’odham Nation. This ruling reverses the court’s prior decision upholding the trust acceptance, and it will slow but probably not derail the Tribe’s efforts to add a fourth casino and enter the lucrative Phoenix market.

After a federal dam project flooded large parts of the Tribe’s reservation near Tucson in 1960, Congress enacted the Gila Bend Indian Reservation Lands Replacement Act of 1986 authorizing the Tribe to purchase land to create a new reservation. Section 6(d) of the Act required the Secretary to accept land in any of three counties, including Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and Glendale, but not “within the corporate limits of any city or town” into trust.

Ordinarily, fee-to-trust decisions are made by the Department of the Interior pursuant to exhaustive regulations, but Congressional acts mandating trust acquisitions supersede the normal Department process for determining trust acquisitions.