Civil Rights Monitor
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The CIVIL RIGHTS MONITOR is a quarterly publication that reports on civil rights issues pending before the three branches of government. The Monitor also provides a historical context within which to assess current civil rights issues. Back issues of the Monitor are available through this site. Browse or search the archives Winter 2004
Supreme Court Holds that Native American Tribes are not "Persons" Eligible to Bring §1983 Suits Inyo County v. Paiute-Shoshone Indians, No. 02-281
Introduction
On May 19, 2003, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous judgment in the case of Inyo County v. Paiute-Shoshone Indians, holding that due to their sovereign immunity, Native American tribes, as a matter of law, were not "persons" eligible to bring suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Background
The Bishop Paiute-Shoshone are a Native American Tribe located in Inyo County, California. The Tribe chartered and wholly owns the Bishop Paiute Gaming Corporation, which in turn owns the Paiute Palace Casino, the primary source of revenue for the Tribe. When the Inyo County District Attorney's Office contacted the casino and requested the employment records of three employees under investigation for welfare fraud, the casino refused on the grounds that the release of such records violated its privacy policy.
After obtaining and executing a search warrant authorizing a search of the Casino's payroll records, the District Attorney's office requested six more personnel records from the Paiute Palace Casino. The Casino again stressed its privacy policy, but agreed to release the records if the District Attorney would give it a redacted copy of the last page of the employees' signed welfare applications, which contained a statement that people applying for public assistance were subject to review by county officials. The District Attorney refused to give the redacted page, and the Tribe filed suit in federal District Court, naming the District Attorney and the Sheriff in their individual and official capacities, in order to prevent them from seizing the records.
The Tribe asked for two types of relief: (1) injunctive, preventing the future seizing of records, and (2) declarative, stating that the Tribe was a sovereign, and therefore immune from state processes under federal law. The relief was sought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which governs lawsuits in civil rights claims. By acting outside of their jurisdiction, plaintiff said the District Attorney and Sheriff had violated Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of both the Paiute-Shoshone and the tribally-owned corporation, as well as the Tribe's right to self-government.
Applying a balancing test that weighed the state's interest in the uniform application of the law against the Tribe's right to protect its records, the district court dismissed the Tribe's complaint, holding that tribal sovereign immunity did not necessarily preclude the search and seizure of the records.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that the execution of the search warrant did in fact violate the Tribe's right to make its own laws and to be governed by them. The appellate court rejected the district court's balancing approach, and held that a "categorical approach" was mandated, whereby only a waiver of immunity by the Tribe or a grant of authority by Congress could authorize the execution of an outside warrant. The Ninth Circuit also overturned the lower court's ruling that the District Attorney and Sheriff were shielded by qualified immunity, concluding that "a reasonable county officer" would know that seizing tribal property on tribal land was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
A Unanimous Decision
On May 19, 2003, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit's holding. Justice Ginsburg wrote the opinion, and Justice Stevens wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment. The Court sent the case back to the Ninth Circuit for further proceedings.
The central issue for the Supreme Court was whether the Paiute-Shoshone's complaint was "actionable" under § 1983. The Court concluded that it was not.
The reasoning of the court turned on the definition of the word "person" in § 1983. Historically, although states are sometimes considered "persons" under the law, such as when purchasing goods from a vendor, states are not considered "persons" with respect to § 1983 lawsuits. In Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police, the Supreme Court held that Congress did not intend to negate "well-established immunities or defenses under the common law" when it enacted § 1983. In this case, both parties agreed, and the Supreme Court accepted the premise, that Native American Tribes are analogous to states with respect to sovereign protection from § 1983 lawsuits.
The Court's holding in this case turned on the fact that the Supreme Court had accepted that Native American Tribes are protected from U.S.C. § 1983 suits under the premise that they were not "persons." If the Tribe was not a "person" for purposes of being sued under § 1983, then, according to the Court, the logical conclusion was that a tribe could not be a "person" for the purposes of bringing suit under § 1983.
Furthermore, the Court found that the purpose of § 1983 was to "secure private rights against government encroachment." From this finding, the court reasoned that § 1983 did not apply to the Paiute-Shoshone, since the Tribe was not acting to secure a private right, but to prevent interference with a "sovereign's prerogative to withhold evidence relevant to a criminal investigation," something which § 1983 was not designed to protect. Thus, even had the Court held that the Tribe was a person for purposes of § 1983 (as Justice Stevens did in his concurring opinion), the Tribe still would have been left without a cause of action.
Implications
Perhaps the most significant outcome of the case is what it did not decide. By not addressing major issues regarding sovereign immunity, and by remanding the case to determine if and how there is jurisdiction under federal common law, the Court's decision did not have the major impact on tribal sovereignty that was initially predicted.
In sum, the Supreme Court's decision in Inyo was an unremarkable outcome to the case. Section 1983 was established for the express purpose of allowing individual persons to recover for violations of their civil rights by other persons. Though in practice this often means recovery from the states when a public official is sued in his public capacity, as a technical matter non-persons, such as states, cannot be sued directly.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court's ruling should have a minimal impact on the issue of Native American sovereignty. Because the Court did not get past the initial technical question of whether the Paiute-Shoshone were eligible to bring suit, it did not have to address the larger issue of how far Native American sovereignty extends.
Even Justice Stevens, who would have held that Native American Tribes are "persons" for the purposes of bringing Section 1983 claims, did not address the issue, though he went further than the Court. Justice Stevens, in his opinion, simply stated that even if the Paiute-Shoshone could bring a 1983 claim, they alleged no violation of their civil rights that would give them a cause of action. Instead, the Tribe asserted that their Tribal sovereignty gave them immunity from searches and seizures by California, and therefore when the district attorney and sheriff executed the search warrant, their immunity, and thus their civil rights, were violated. However, as sovereignty is not a civil right, while the District Attorney and Sheriff might have violated the Tribe's sovereignty, that injury cannot be asserted in a civil rights claim.
The Court, in sending back the case, ordered a "focused consideration and resolution on [the] jurisdictional issue" as to what federal law, if any, would allow the Tribe to maintain that there is a federal claim, absent § 1983. The basis for the remand was that the Tribe had originally asserted, in addition to its § 1983 claim, that the "federal common law of Indian affairs" provided it with a federal question.
In remanding the case, the Supreme Court said that neither the district court nor the court of appeals carefully considered the federal common law claim. The language of the holding is somewhat ambiguous, however, and may allow for additional federal claims beyond the jurisdictional issue (such as whether Native American sovereignty grants Indian tribes, and their wholly owned institutions, protection from warrants issued by a state or local government) to be raised in and decided by the Ninth Circuit.
  
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