The long and complex dispute between Bay Mills Indian Community and the state of Michigan has been revived, giving the tribe another chance to pursue an off-reservation casino on a site acquired through a land claim settlement. In a per curiam decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a federal judge previously resolved the case without addressing some key issues.
The parcel in question is located 125 miles south of the tribe’s reservation in the Upper Peninsula. The tribe opened a small casino there nine years ago, which was forced to close. At the time, the state argued the casino could set a precedent leading to similar venues opening across the state. During oral arguments in October, Judge Joan L. Larsen said the state’s alarmist position was, “You could buy a piece of land here, across the street from the courthouse and you could operate a casino. Why are they wrong?”
Larsen vacated the judge’s ruling, giving the tribe another chance to prove the state is wrong. The lawsuit will return to a lower court where the tribe and state will argue over two sentences in the Michigan Indian Land Claims Settlement Act their impact on the tribe’s potential casino. “We do not intend to suggest a proper understanding of either sentence, or of the two when read together,” the Sixth Circuit’s ruling stated.
Under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, gaming is prohibited on land acquired after 1988; the Bay Mills tribe purchased the Vanderbilt property in August 2010. However, Section 20 of the law includes an exception regarding situations involving a land claim settlement. The tribe claims the Vanderbilt parcel qualifies for the exception, despite its distance from the reservation, since it was purchased with a trust fund established by the settlement act.
The earlier case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in a May 2014 decision, the justices ruled 5 to 4 that the state could not sue the tribe because of sovereign immunity.
