A judge of the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a 45-day delay in the beginning stages of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s appeal of a lawsuit decision that stopped the tribe’s construction of its $1 billion casino in Taunton, Massachusetts.
The lawsuit involves the process by which the Bureau of Indian Affairs put land for the tribe into trust, thus making it possible to begin construction of its First Light Casino.
The delay gives the tribe until April 27 to file its brief, instead of March 13, as was initially required.
The tribe is appealing the decision by Judge William G. Young of the U.S. District Court in Boston, who last July ruled in favor of 25 residents of East Taunton who claim that the BIA acted improperly in September 2015 when it put land into trust for the tribe. However, in February the tribe’s attorneys asked for an extension to file because of an issue unresolved in the case that might take them longer to prepare to answer.
The issue is that when Young ruled against the tribe he left open the door for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to resubmit its arguments putting the land into trust. Because of that, both the tribe and the East Taunton residents are able to submit additional testimony to the BIA.
Since the tribe’s attorneys would be busy preparing more than 100 pages of materials, the tribe asked for an extension for arguing its case before the Appeals Court.
The East Taunton residents, while not opposing the extension, wanted assurances that the tribe wouldn’t use the delays to resume building on the casino. They noted that when they first filed their complaint against the tribe that “the tribe tried to proceed as quickly as possible with the casino construction in the hope that the facts on the ground in East Taunton would outpace and overtake the judicial process, thus making it unlikely and/or more difficult to ‘unwind’ the construction of a casino.”
They requested that the extension be conditioned on the construction adhering to the status quo. The court refused to grant that request.
In any event, the East Taunton residents want extra time themselves to prepare, especially since the U.S. Department of the Interior hasn’t yet decided whether it wants to join the tribe in an appeal. That decision may be soon since on March 1 Ryan Zinke was approved to be Secretary of the Interior by the U.S. Senate.
