Fisher v. District Court of the Sixteenth Judicial District of Montana

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that Indians could be denied access to state courts in connection with an adoption proceeding arising on a reservation
• deciding that Northern Cheyenne Tribe had authority to exercise jurisdiction over adoption proceedings among its members pursuant to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 enacted by Congress
• observing that state courts lack subject matter jurisdiction to decide Indian domestic relations matters where all the Indian parties were domiciled on a reservation
• explaining that the jurisdiction of a tribal court “does not derive from [] race . . . but rather from the quasi-sovereign status of [tribes] under federal law”
• explaining that the “exclusive jurisdiction of the Tribal Court” in an adoption dispute “d[id] not derive from the race of the plaintiff but rather from the quasi-sovereign status of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe”
• acknowledging that Williams test generally applies where case involves a non-Indian, but nonetheless applying the analysis to reject state court jurisdiction over adoption proceeding where all parties were tribal members living on reservation

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).