South Carolina v. Catawba Indian Tribe, Inc.

In 1980, the Catawba sued the state of South Carolina and 76 public and private land-owning entities, as named representatives of a defendant class estimated at 27,000 persons.[14] The tribe contended that the Treaty of Nation Ford was void because of the federal Nonintercourse Act and because the state had not lived up to its obligations (by delaying the purchase for 2.5 years, by spending only $2,000 on the new reservation, and buying land for the new reservation from within the old reservation).[5] The tribe sought both possession of the lands and 140 years of trespass damages.[15] The Catawba were represented by the Native American Rights Fund (NARF).[1]

All members of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina recused themselves from the case.[15] Therefore, Judge Joseph Putnam Willson of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania was designated to try the case[15] by Chief Justice Burger.[1] Wilson decided to resolve the merits before reaching the plaintiff's motion to certify the defendant class.[1] Wilson granted summary judgement to the defendants.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed. The Circuit reheard the case en banc with the same result. The Fourth Circuit interpreted the termination act to apply only to the tribal members, not the tribe itself.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari and the United States Solicitor General joined the defendants at oral argument.[16]

Justice John Paul Stevens, for a majority of six, held that the South Carolina statute of limitations applied to the Catawba's claim, but did not reach the issue of whether it barred the tribe's claim.[4]

The Court rejected the Fourth Circuit's interpretation of the termination act, stating: "The canon of construction regarding the resolution of ambiguities in favor of Indians, however, does not permit reliance on ambiguities that do not exist; nor does it permit disregard of the clearly expressed intent of Congress."[17] Thus, having concluded that the tribe itself was terminated, the Court held that the statute of limitations should apply:

Without special federal protection for the Tribe, the state statute of limitations should apply to its claim in this case. For it is well established that federal claims are subject to state statutes of limitations unless there is a federal statute of limitations or a conflict with federal policy. Although federal policy may preclude the ordinary applicability of a state statute of limitations for this type of action in the absence of a specific congressional enactment to the contrary, the Catawba Act clearly suffices to reestablish the usual principle regarding the applicability of the state statute of limitations. In striking contrast to the situation in [Oneida II], the Catawba Act represents an explicit redefinition of the relationship between the Federal Government and the Catawbas; an intentional termination of the special federal protection for the Tribe and its members; and a plain statement that state law applies to the Catawbas as to all “other persons or citizens.”[18]

As for the BIA's assurance, the Court that only meant that the termination act did not terminate the claim, not that the statute of limitations would not begin to run.[19] Because the Court of Appeals had only held that the statute of limitation did not apply, not that it would not bar the claim if it applied, and the district court had held the claim barred, the Court remanded to the Court of Appeals to pass on that conclusion of the district court.[20]

Justice Harry Blackmun would have interpreted the termination act to apply only to the individual Catawbas, not the tribe, and not to undo the common law restraint on alienation.

Justice Harry Blackmun, joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Thurgood Marshall dissented.

Noting that the Catawba's claims arose from the federal Constitution, federal treaties, and a federal statute, the dissent argued: "These are federal claims and the statute of limitations is thus a matter of federal law. Where, as here, Congress has not specified a statute of limitations, federal courts generally borrow the most closely analogous limitations period under state law, but only if application of the state limitations period would not frustrate federal policy."[21] In determining whether federal policy would bar the borrowing of the state statute of limitations—as it had in Oneida II—the dissent would have relied on the Indian law canon of construction.[22] To this end, the dissent noted:

This rule is not simply a method of breaking ties; it reflects an altogether proper reluctance by the judiciary to assume that Congress has chosen further to disadvantage a people whom our Nation long ago reduced to a state of dependency. The rule is particularly appropriate when the statute in question was passed primarily for the benefit of the Indians, as was the 1959 Division of Assets Act. Absent “clear and plain” language to the contrary, it must be assumed that Congress did not intend to belie its “avowed solicitude” for the Indians with a “backhanded” abrogation or limitation of their rights.[23]

The dissent did not find the statute as clear as the majority did. Moreover, the dissent argued that the termination statute undid only the statutory restraint on alienation (the Nonintercourse Act), not the common law restraint on alienation:

[E]ven if I agreed with the majority that the removal of restraints on alienation should trigger the application of state limitations periods, the 1959 Act lifted only statutory restrictions on the alienation of Catawba land, and the requirement that the Federal Government approve any transfer of the property at issue in this case did not, and does not, stem solely from any federal statute. The land set aside for the Catawbas in 1760 and 1763 was within the Tribe's aboriginal territory, and their claim to the land thus derives from original title as well as from the 18th-century treaties. With respect to original title, at least, the Nonintercourse Act merely “put in statutory form what was or came to be the accepted rule-that the extinguishment of Indian title required the consent of the United States.”[24]

In a footnote, the dissent further noted that:

The federal common-law rule against alienation of aboriginal title without the consent of the sovereign was recognized as early as [Johnson v. McIntosh (1823)], and it is reflected in the Constitution's Indian Commerce Clause . . . . In Oneida II, the Court rejected a suggestion that Indian common-law rights to tribal lands were somehow swallowed up or pre-empted by the Nonintercourse Act; it made clear that the common law still furnishes an independent basis for legal relief.[25]

The dissent also rejected the suggestion by the majority that the tribe's gradual assimilation weakened its claim:

When an Indian Tribe has been assimilated and dispersed to this extent-and when, as the majority points out, thousands of people now claim interests in the Tribe's ancestral homeland, the Tribe's claim to that land may seem ethereal, and the manner of the Tribe's dispossession may seem of no more than historical interest. But the demands of justice do not cease simply because a wronged people grow less distinctive, or because the rights of innocent third parties must be taken into account in fashioning a remedy. Today's decision seriously handicaps the Catawbas' effort to obtain even partial redress for the illegal expropriation of lands twice pledged to them, and it does so by attributing to Congress, in effect, an unarticulated intent to trick the Indians a century after the property changed hands. From any perspective, there is little to be proud of here.[26]

Finally, the dissent repeated Justice Black's famous Tuscarora rule: "[g]reat nations, like great men, should keep their word."[27]