Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida

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Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that Article One of the U.S. Constitution did not give the United States Congress the power to abrogate the sovereign immunity of the states that is further protected under the Eleventh Amendment . Such abrogation is permitted where it is necessary to enforce the rights of citizens guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment as per _Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer _. The case also held that the doctrine of _Ex parte Young _, which allows state officials to be sued in their official capacity for prospective injunctive relief , was inapplicable under these circumstances, because any remedy was limited to the one that Congress had provided.

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 Indian gaming history

  • 1.2 Legislation

  • 1.3 Case history

    • 1.3.1 Facts of the case

• 2 Supreme Court

  • 2.1 Arguments

  • 2.2 Opinion of the Court

  • 2.3 Dissenting Opinions

• 3 Subsequent developments

• 4 See also

• 5 Footnotes

• 6 References

• 7 External links

Background

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Indian gaming history

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Seminole men at the Hollywood Reservation

The Seminole Tribe of Florida owned property in Fort Lauderdale, Florida , seven miles southwest of downtown, and in the late 1970s, built a large bingo facility on that land. As this was before the enactment of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act , the tribe then sued the Broward County Sheriff in federal court to prevent him from enforcing state law on tribal land. The Southern District of Florida heard the case and issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the tribe in 1979 and a permanent injunction the following year. The sheriff appealed, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed the lower court's decision.

That court decision opened the floodgates for Indian gaming, which had been shut down in 1949 by a decision in Wisconsin that Indians could not use slot machines or other gambling instruments on their reservations. Since bingo did not use those prohibited instruments, the tribes were free to open bingo halls. By 1983, about 180 bingo halls were being operated by tribes on reservations across the nation. This prompted a flood of litigation as the individual States attempted to shut down Indian gaming by either civil or criminal cases, efforts which typically failed, as in California.

As the various Indian tribes sought to obtain a steady source of revenue through gaming, some tribes went further than others. While abiding with the federal prohibition on gambling machines and instruments, the Puyallaup Indian tribe , on their reservation, opened casinos that offered blackjack , poker , and craps . Federal law enforcement authorities arrested the tribal members operating the casino and charged them with violating the Organized Crime Control Act .

Similar results occurred in Michigan with the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa Indians .

Legislation

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Main article: Indian Gaming Regulatory Act

Beginning in 1984, Congress began to hold hearings on Indian gaming. Based on the Supreme Court decision in Cabazon that basically prohibited state regulation while allowing federal enforcement, Congress had to take some type of action. The Department of Justice (DOJ) took the position that it would be unable to prevent organized crime from being involved in Indian gaming operations.

At the same time, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) called for preemptive legislation allowing tribal control and prohibiting state interference. States and non-tribal gaming interests opposed any tribal gaming.

In 1988 Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). The final result was a compromise between the competing interests, and established three classes of gaming: Class I, traditional, low value gaming, often for ceremonial purposes; Class II, bingo and like games such as pull-tabs , and punchboards ; and Class III, which included all other gaming, such as slot machines, craps, poker, and so on. Tribes are allowed to regulate all Class I/II Indian gaming, and the act set requirements for regulating Class III gaming, which was regulated by compacts between the tribes and the states, and overseen by the NIGC.

Many of the American Indian tribes were opposed to the legislation and the Mescalero Apache and Red Lake Band of Chippewa sued in an attempt to declare the law unconstitutional. The lawsuit was the first major attempt by an Indian Tribe to reverse the federal policy announced in _Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock _,

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