Legality of Land into Trust Authorization NOT Before Supreme Court

The Supreme Court granted cert today in Carcieri v. Kempthorne, No. 07-526. The case involves efforts by the State of Rhode Island to prevent additional lands from being taken in trust by the federal government for the Narragansett Tribe. Materials regarding the background of the case, the petition for certiorari and the lower court opinion can be found here. While first two of the three issues Rhode Island presented in the case involve narrow questions applicable primarily to the Narragansett as a result of the Rhode Island Indian Claims Settlement Act, one of the issues in the cert petition involves a nationwide bombshell -- the legality of Section 5 of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). Specifically, the question Rhode Island sought to present in the cert petition is "Whether providing land “for Indians” in the 1934 Act establishes a sufficiently intelligible principle upon which to delegate the power to take land into trust." Since Section 5 of the IRA provides the only general federal statute authorizing the federal government to take land, an adverse ruling from the Court on this issue could have catastrophic consequences for Indian tribes nationwide. Fortunately, the Supreme Court order limited review to the first two narrow issues and declined review on the broader issue of Section 5 and the nondelagation doctrine. This was at least the second time that the Supreme Court has declined to tackle nondelagation doctrine challenges to Section 5 head on. The first occurred when the Supreme Court vacated the adverse decision in South Dakota v. United States Dep’t of the Interior, 69 F.3d 878 (8th Cir. 1995), resulting in the later decision uphold the authority of the Secretary to take land into trust under Section 5. That decision is available here.