United States of America v. Billy Jo Lara

Anyone have any random thoughts on the U.S v. Lara case? I’m reading it for my federal Indian law class with Professor Ray Cross at the University of Montana. Actually, I will pretend to be a lawyer tomorrow in class and represent Lara before the U.S. Supreme Court justices. Yikes. It makes me wish I had reported on this case as  a journalist at the newspaper. But I had most of the year off in 2004, the same year I finished my year-long journalism fellowship at Harvard. The same year I moved to Missoula, Mont. Dang.  It’s already been five years. Anyway, I am now a full-time graduate student working on a book about the management of Indian land, an endeavor that has led me to take a federal Indian law class. This is a case people should be familiar with because it reaffirms the inherent sovereignty of tribes. It also calls for the review of a few other key cases relative to Lara, including the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe and United States v. Wheeler. Then the High Court gave us Duro v. Reina in 1990, followed by Congress’s Duro Fix the same year with an amendment to the Indian Civil Rights Act. Means argued tribes criminal jurisdiction authority violated Indian citizen’s right to due process and equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

If I were Billy Jo Lara, I’d say to Congress: “Hey, you can’t do that!” But, Congress did. And the supreme justices agreed with the lawmakers.

Two years after the High Court ruled in Lara, Russell Means entered the fray with his own arguments against a tribe’s right to prosecute members of other tribes. His case was brought before the Ninth District U.S. Court of Appeals in 2006. Means argued the Navajo Nation had no right to prosecute him for beating his wife and father-in-law because he wasn’t a member of the Navajo Tribe. He raised a few good questions, questions that could apply in Lara.

To begin: Means asked how Congress could vest tribes with criminal jurisdiction over Indians who are U.S. citizens, a point he raised in light of the fact the the U.S. Constitution does not apply to tribes. Really, this is way too much to explain right now, but it rings with many elements of truth considering that Indian Country’s Bill of Rights, the Indian Civil Rights Act is enforceable only when tribes decide so.
Why should we care? The Duro and Oliphant cases demonstrate a disconcerting shift in how the court turned its back on inherent tribal sovereignty. In Lara, however, the case demonstrates the plenary power of Congress to legislate on behalf of Native peoples despite the Supreme Court’s previous decisions. I find the case interesting because it’s one of the few examples I can think of where Congress overruled the Supreme Court on behalf of tribes. The Lara decision is rooted in Duro v. Reina, a case in which the High Court ruled a tribal court could not prosecute members of another tribe. This created a serious problem for upholding the law in Indian Country. After much outcry, Congress remedied the situation with the Duro Fix.

What do you think? Check out all the links to the cases and then make your own decision.

  Jodi Rave