The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation on June 8, 2020, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its handling of the $8 billion coronavirus relief fund.
The complaint says the Department of the Treasury awarded $4.8 billion from the fund without taking the Kansas-based tribe’s enrollment data into consideration. A motion for a temporary restraining order calls on the remaining $3.2 billion to be withheld until an allocation formula can be devised that takes citizenship into account.
“In this motion, plaintiff seeks to restrain Treasury from disbursing $3.2 billion dollars of CARES Act funds to ‘Tribal governments’ until it adopts an allocation methodology that corrects its underfunding of tribes like Prairie Band Potawatomi that resulted from Treasury’ arbitrary and capricious decision to ignore tribal enrollment when making distributions on the basis of Tribal population,” the motion reads.
“Plaintiff believes that the disbursement of these funds (‘Title V Funds’) is imminent,” the motion adds, highlighting the emergency nature of the request.
Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation v. Mnuchin has been assigned to Judge Amit P. Mehta, who is handling four other CARES Act lawsuits related to Treasury’s handling of the $8 billion coronavirus relief fund.
A hearing is taking place via teleconference at 3pm Eastern on June 8.
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