The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals will consider whether two Indian tribes in Wyoming should be given state status for environmental purposes. The case is an appeal from a 2013 decision by the EPA that Riverton, Wyoming and surrounding lands in Wyoming are still Indian country. This area makes up the Wind River Indian Reservation.
The claim being made by the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes is that the land in question was reservation land, and that the reservation was never dissolved by federal action. The EPA granted the two tribes state status as a joint reservation for Clean Air Act purposes.
According to the EPA’s website, several environmental laws authorize the EPA to treat eligible federally-recognized Indian tribes as sovereigns and in the same manner as states for implementing and managing certain environmental laws. Those laws include the Clean Air Act, and certain provisions of the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.
The upcoming review by the Tenth Circuit has attracted briefs from states, including Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah. These ten states argue that applying federal common law principles to historical facts to determine state status is outside the EPA’s jurisdiction and expertise. Another issue in the case is what deference must be given to the EPA’s legal conclusion to alter Wyoming’s boundaries.
For more information, contact Toni Ellington at (504) 599-8500.
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