Term Paper on "U.S. Supreme Court Decision"

Term Paper 5 pages (1708 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

U.S. Supreme Court Decision

Supreme Court Decision

City of Sherrill, New York v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, et al.

The objective of this work is to write a review of the Supreme Court decision in the case of City of Sherrill, New York v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, et al.

Summary of the Conflict

The Oneida Indian Nation of New York descends directly from the Oneida Indian Nation. The Oneida Nation's aboriginal homeland is stated to be formed by approximately six million acres in central New York State and owned land that stretch "...from Pennsylvania border to the St. Lawrence River and from Lake Ontario to the Adirondack foothills." (Grant, 2005) in the year of 1785 the Oneida Tribe sold 300,000 acres in the Treaty of Fort Herkimer to the State of New York. In the year of 1788, New York Sate and the Oneida Indian Nation entered into a treaty with the Oneidas releasing the lands they owned to the Sate of New York. The reservation territory of 300,000 acres was retained by the Indian Nation at this time. Under the Act of November 11, 1794, 7 Stat. 44, 45, Art. III, Treaty of Canandaigua, the United States guaranteed the Oneida Indians the "free use and enjoyment" of this reservation. However, New York continued in their purchasing of this land from the Oneida Nation with the administration in Washington at the time objecting. The administrations in Washington in years following however did not object and are stated to have "pursued a policy designed to open reservation lands to white settler and to remove tribes westward." (Cornell Law School, nd) by the year 1920 the Oneida Nation owned a mere 32 acres in the State of New York. The earliest litigations of the Oneida Nation made claims for monetary compensation but eventually the Oneida Nation filed suits against local governments and filed a federal case against two counties in New York in 1970 in which they alleged that the land sold to New York in 1795 was in violation of the Non-Intercourse Act and claim that because of this violation the land should be the property of the Oneida Nation. Damages were also sought for fair rental value. The lower courts decided in the favor of the Oneidas in terms of their rights of possession however, the question of whether the present day Oneida Nation had the right to equitable compensation was reserved by the court. In the year of 1997, the Oneida Indian Nation purchased a parcel of land in the city of Sherrill New York. The Oneidas received a property tax bill but they did not pay it claiming that under federal law that this land was free from state and municipal taxation, which resulted in a legal battle that landed in the federal court late in the year of 2000.

Summary of the Contention of Each Party

It was the contention of the Oneida Nation that because the land was originally reservation lands that they should not have to pay taxes on the land. However, the City of Sherrill contended that because the land had been sold to a non-Indian and then sold back to the Oneida Nation and that because the land had been classified as an Indian reservation in the late 1800s but was no longer Indian country that the Oneida Nation was required to pay tax on the land to the City of Sherrill. Three points posited by the city of Sherrill include the second of these in which the City of Sherrill contended that while the land was at one time the property of the Indians the status of that property was lost when the tribe made its move from the state of New York to Kansas (1838 Buffalo Creek Treaty). The third point of the City of Sherrill was that the Oneida tribe cased to exist in the latter part of the 19th and earlier part of the 20th century. The contention of the Oneida Nation was that in their opinion the land had not lost reservation territory status because the federal government is the only government entity that is empowered to make changes to the status of Indian reservation land.

Summary of Court Decisions

In February 2000 the Oneida Nation filed a suit hoping to prevent the City of Sherrill from collecting property tax and the City of Sherrill filed an eviction later in the month taking ownership of the land. The two suits came together in a case before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. The court stated an agreement with both parties that the real question was the question of whether the land was indeed Indian country. In its' decision of June 4, 2001 the District Court decided in favor of the Oneida Nation stating: "The Nation has set forth undisputed evidence that the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua confirmed and guaranteed its reservation, which encompasses the lands at issue here There is no evidence of any congressional act that disestablished the reservation between 1794 and the present day. Accordingly, this land is Indian Country and is not taxable by Sherrill and the Counties." (Ibid)

The case then went to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on July 21, 2003, with the panel siding with the Oneida Nation in a 2-1 vote stating: "This reservation has never been disestablished, and accordingly, the 'trust relationship' between the federal government and the Oneidas has never been terminated. We conclude that Sherrill can neither tax the land nor evict the Oneidas." (Judge Barrington Parker Jr. As cited in: Medill Journalism, on the Docket 2004-2005 Term, Northwestern University) the case then moved to the U.S. Supreme Court for consideration.

The case was accepted for review June 28, 2004 and on March 29, 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of the lower courts and concluded that the Oneida Nation must pay the property tax on the land. Chief Justice Ginsberg wrote that because the "character of central New York" and those who live there and the laws of that area of the state had been under local law for more than 200 years, and due to the "long delay" on the part of the Oneida Nation in attempting to gain back the right to the land, that under the federal Indian law and under Federal law equity in general the Oneida Nation had been precluded from "unilaterally reviving its ancient sovereignty, in whole or in part..." In relation to the land at issue in this case. Chief Justice Ginsberg specifically stated: "Oneidas long ago relinquished governmental reins and cannot regain them through open-market purchases from current titleholders." (Cornell Law School, Supreme Court Collection, 2006)

Discussion

It is quite clear that the Oneida Nation had sold its land willingly to the State of New York over two centuries ago and that when the Oneida Nation filed suit in connection to this land that what the Nation had sought was equitable relief in monetary form. The Oneida Nation had purchased the land back through the free market and after having done so attempted to gain relief from taxes through use of an old law that was rendered to be void in relation to the land in question after the Oneida Nation had sold the land more than two hundred years ago. In other words, the guarantees set out in the laws of both U.S. federal and state laws in relation to reservation land would not apply in this case as the Indian Nation had sold the land willingly and then after 200 years repurchased the land in the free-market. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded the decision of the lower courts. This clearly demonstrates that an Indian Nation who has relinquished freely in a free enterprise sale of reservation land, and who has done so more than two decades ago, and who when did attempt to seek relief through the courts requested only monetary relief and not the reinstatement of reservation status to the land in question has so relinquished their rights in a manner that repurchasing of the land is not enough to restore that land to reservation status and claim the 'tax-free' status of the land as could have been claimed in the original reservation status of the land at the time the land was declared reservation land under laws more than two decades prior to this decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Statement of Interest in This Case

Interest in this case for the researcher includes the question of applicability of old laws and the points that the U.S. Supreme Court made its decision based upon. The Regional Director of Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Eastern Regional Office denied this application based on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case under review in this work. It is interesting to note that had the Oneida Nation pursued status rights of the land instead of monetary relief only in the prior suit… READ MORE

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