Federal judges blocked Wisconsin taxes on some tribal lands

Posted by Joe Kelly | Court news

MADISON, Wisconsin (CN) – A federal judge in Madison ruled Friday that reservation areas of four Chippewa tribes in northern Wisconsin cannot be state taxed if they have been Indian-owned since their federal government allocation.

In November 2018, the plaintiff tribes sued former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, then Wisconsin Treasury Secretary Richard Chandler, and eleven northern Wisconsin cities and their appraisers in federal court for attempts by the state to keep property within the boundaries of their respective reservations to evaluate and tax.

The tribes include the Lac Courtes Oreilles, Lac du Flambeau, Red Cliff, and the Bad River Bands of Lake Superior Chippewa. They will be represented by Colette Routel, director of the Indian Law Litigation Clinic at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, attorneys at St. Paul-based law firm Hogen Adams and tribal attorneys.

Since the filing of the complaint, the current Governor Tony Evers and Peter Barca, Treasury Secretary of the Evers administration, have taken on the defendants in place of Walker and Chandler.

The tribes claimed the state’s plans to impose property taxes on their reservation violated the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution and an 1854 treaty known as the Treaty with the Chippewa. The 1854 treaty became the central theme of the dispute when the four tribes bringing the lawsuit said they were to be the successors of the Wisconsin Ojibwe bands who were signing the treaty.

As the US government and white settlement expanded west, the government moved in the 1850s towards creating Indian reservations in areas where tribes had lived hundreds of years before the Europeans arrived.

In Badger State, negotiations on September 30 that year resulted in the 1854 Treaty, which resulted in Lake Superior Ojibwe bands in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan ceding more than 7 million acres of their land in exchange for the government’s promise to to be permanent. tax-exempt reservations.

Confusing matters in the tribes’ lawsuit is the General Allotment Act of 1887, which states that after a period of time in which property allotments were held in US trusts, tribal members would receive a simple honorary patent for their country.

While a 1992 US Supreme Court ruling said the General Allotment Act gave states “unmistakably clear approval” to tax these chargeable simple properties, the tribes believed that their properties were allotted under the Treaty of 1854 were not binding under the General Allotment Act.

The tribes’ lawsuit was based on discovery and procedural measures until the tribes and state government finally filed counter motions for a summary judgment in late 2019. US District Judge James Peterson proposed a scheduled trial date and concluded that the matter could be resolved with a summary judgment one year to the day before the decision on Friday.

Peterson ultimately issued a partial summary judgment to both the tribes and the government, stating that the tribes’ reservation assets are not taxable unless it passed into non-Indian ownership at some point after the allocation. In this case, it can still be taxed even if it is later changed hands back into Indian property.

The result is that “the court concludes that Indian owned property on plaintiff tribes’ land is generally non-taxable,” wrote Peterson. The judge gave some of the tribes permanent injunctions against the taxation of their reservation assets, unless those assets were previously in non-Indian possession.

Peterson also agreed with the Tribes that the Treaty of 1854 is by and large the controlling factor in taxing the property of the Tribes, not the General Allocation Act of 1887. The Tribes and the government agreed that prior to 1887 allotments were made Land is not taxable.

“The historical records show that land in the Tribal Reservations was allocated under the Treaty of 1854, and the General Allocation Act does not express the intention of Congress to usurp the rights granted to the Tribes under the 1854 Treaty, and this is certainly not in an unmistakably clear form. “As required by law, said the one appointed by Barack Obama.

According to a 1998 US Supreme Court ruling, “Indian tax immunity does not rest in times of non-Indian ownership, only to be revived when ownership reverts to Indian ownership,” so that parts of the country that were once non- Indians were eligible for taxation, Peterson said.

The judge ordered the case to be closed but continued to enforce his judgment for 30 days to allow the parties to appeal.

Lawyers and representatives of the tribes and the state government could not be reached immediately on Friday to comment on the court’s decision.

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