Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe

This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. (August 2024)

Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe, 455 U.S. 130 (1982), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States holding that an Indian tribe has the authority to impose taxes on non-Indians that are conducting business on the reservation as an inherent power under their tribal sovereignty.

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 History

  • 1.2 District court

  • 1.3 Circuit court

• 2 Opinion of the Court

  • 2.1 Initial arguments

  • 2.2 Re-argument

  • 2.3 Majority opinion

  • 2.4 Dissent

• 3 Subsequent developments

• 4 See also

• 5 References

• 6 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Merrion_v._Jicarilla_Apache_Tribe&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

History

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Merrion_v._Jicarilla_Apache_Tribe&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: History")

Map showing the Jicarilla Apache Reservation (in purple)

The Jicarilla Apache Tribe is a Native American (Indian) tribe in northwestern New Mexico on a reservation of 742,315 acres (3,004.04 km2; 1,159.867 sq mi). The reservation was established by an Executive Order of President Grover Cleveland in 1887 and clarified by the Executive Orders of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 and William Howard Taft in 1912. The tribe adopted a formal constitution under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act , 25 U.S.C.  § 461 et seq. that provided for the taxation of members of the tribe and non-members of the tribe doing business on the reservation. If the tribe enacted a such tax ordinance on non-members, the ordinance had to be approved by the Secretary of the Interior .

Beginning in 1953, the tribe entered into agreements with oil companies, including the plaintiffs Merrion and Bayless, to provide oil and gas leases. The leases were approved by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (now the Bureau of Indian Affairs , or BIA) in accordance with 25 U.S.C.  §§ 396a –396g . As was the usual practice at the time, the oil companies negotiated directly with BIA, who then presented the contracts to the tribal council. While the oil and gas was from reservation land, Merrion paid severance taxes to the state of New Mexico under the provisions of 25 U.S.C.  § 398c , where Congress had authorized such taxation in 1927. The leases provided for royalties to be paid to the tribe, but the BIA was lax in collecting them. In 1973, tribal attorneys wrote to the BIA to demand the collection of royalties, and after a year delay, the BIA would only state that they were "looking into it." In 1976, the BIA approved a tribal ordinance that also provided for a severance tax. This tax was set at 29 cents (U.S.) per barrel of oil and at 5 cents per million British thermal units (BTU) for natural gas .

District court

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Merrion_v._Jicarilla_Apache_Tribe&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: District court")

Merrion did not want to pay a severance tax to both New Mexico and the tribe, and filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico , along with such major companies as Atlantic Richfield (now part of BP ), Getty Oil , Gulf Oil , and Phillips Petroleum (now ConocoPhillips ), among others. The case was not filed until 15 days before the severance tax was due. In the hearing on the temporary injunction on June 17, 1977, Merrion argued that the tribe's severance tax was unconstitutional, violating both the Commerce Clause and Equal Protection Clause , and that it was both taxation without representation and double taxation. In addition, the plaintiffs argued against the entire concept of tribal sovereignty , stating that it had been a "legal fiction for decades." U.S. District Judge H. Vearle Payne granted the temporary injunction and set the hearing on the permanent injunction for August 29, 1977. The oil companies showed up with approximately 40-50 attorneys, compared to 2 or 3 lawyers for the tribe. Both sides made essentially the same arguments as for the temporary injunction. Following the hearing, District court ruled that the tribe's tax violated the Commerce clause of the Constitution and that only state and local authorities had the ability to tax mineral rights on Indian reservations. The court then issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the collection of the tax by the tribe.

Circuit court

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Merrion_v._Jicarilla_Apache_Tribe&action=edit&section=4 "Edit section: Circuit court")

The case then went to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals . The western states of Utah , New Mexico , Montana , North Dakota and Wyoming filed _amici curiae _ briefs in support of the oil companies, while the Navajo Nation , the Arapahoe Nation , the Shoshone Indian Tribe , the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes , the [Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M

…