Summer 2006

judge

Native American Legal Briefs:

--Indian Country--

On January 3, 2006, the Connecticut Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Jo-ann Dark-Eyes v. Commissioner of Revenue Services, finding that Jo-ann Dark Eyes, a member of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, owed back income taxes to the state. Tribal members pay federal taxes, but those who earn their income on a reservation and live there do not need to pay state taxes. In this case, the Tribal member earned money from the Tribal Council on the Reservation and lived on land owned by the Tribe. The decision focused on whether that land qualified as "Indian Country" so as to exempt the Tribal member from the requirement to pay state taxes.

In 1983, the US congress passed a Settlement Act giving federal recognition to the Mashantucket Pequots in settlement of its land claims and set up "settlement funds" to buy lands that were designated as "settlement lands." Settlement land bought with settlement funds automatically became part of the Reservation. The Tribe bought the land in question in 1993. The land was within the private settlement lands but was not bought with settlement funds. In 1998, at the request of the Tribe, the land was taken into trust for the Tribe by the US government and became part of the reservation. Jo-ann Dark Eyes lived on the land from 1993 until 1998. The Connecticut Revenue Service ruled that the land did not qualify as Indian Country until 1998, when it was formally taken in trust. The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld that finding in this decision.

The Court first noted that statutes involving Indians must be construed liberally in favor of the Indians. The Court then looked at the Settlement Act and the federal Indian Civil Rights Act to make sure that the definitions of Indian Country did not conflict. The Court found that they did not. It then went on to look at the definition of Indian Country contained in the Civil Rights Act. The Court noted that:

    "Congress has defined Indian country broadly to include formal and informal reservations, dependent Indian communities, and Indian allotments, whether restricted or held in trust by the United States."

The Court stated that the land in question did not qualify as a "formal reservation" until it was taken into trust by the US government. The Court then looked at whether the land qualified as a "dependent Indian community:"

    "...Congress indicated that a federal set-aside and a federal superintendence requirement must be satisfied for a finding of a 'dependent Indian community' . . . . The federal set-aside requirement ensures that the land in question is occupied by an 'Indian community'; the federal superintendence requirement guarantees that the Indian community is sufficiently 'dependent' on the Federal Government that the Federal Government and the Indians involved, rather than the States, are to exercise primary jurisdiction over the land in question.''

The Court concluded that there had been no "set aside", finding that the terms of the Settlement Act showed, at most,

    an intent ... to allow [the Tribe] to acquire those lands within the designated area that the private landholders had agreed to sell to the tribe during settlement negotiations without necessarily incurring a commitment to exercise jurisdiction over all activities on that land by the tribe, to the presumptive exclusion of state laws.

The Court also looked at whether the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act prohibited the state from taxing the Tribal member in this case. The Court found that "the gaming act does not expressly preempt state taxation of income received by tribal members from reservation gaming activity." Therefore, the state was not prevented from taxing the Tribal member.