Arizona et. al. v San Carlos Apache Tribe of Arizona 

Facts:

The McCarran Amendment of 1952 explicitly allowed for disputes over water rights to be handled by state court systems.  The Amendment was designed to stop individual water rights’ claims against the federal government.  Congress waived its sovereign immunity regarding water rights, and by extension Indian tribes were also forced to settle disputes over water rights in state courts.  In response, tribes, including the San Carlos Apache, sued Arizona in an effort to retain the right to have water rights’ issues disputed in federal court.  Traditionally, as the court noted, “the federal courts had jurisdiction…to hear…suits brought both by the United States and the Indian tribes.” 

Issues:

Do Indian tribes have “the right to have certain water rights…adjudicated in federal court?”

Holding:

No.  Arizona and other states have jurisdiction in the adjudication of Indian water rights.

Reasoning:

The Supreme Court determined that even in the face of state Enabling Acts or Public Law 280 any “limitation[s]…originally placed on state court jurisdiction over Indian water rights…were removed by the McCarran Amendment.”  Furthermore, the court maintained, that because the McCarran Amendment allowed for remediation in state courts, “concurrent federal proceedings are likely to be duplicative.”  The McCarran Amendment, by virtue of having waived sovereign immunity regarding water rights, was found by the Court to take precedence over established procedure for settling water rights’ disputes involving Indian tribes in federal court.

Historical Significance:

Arizona et. al. v San Carlos Apache Tribe of Arizona stands as a great intrusion into tribal sovereignty.  While the court was careful to note “that our decision in no way changes the substantive law by which Indian rights in state water adjudications must be judged” and that “Indian tribes and their reservation lands are insulated in some respects by an ‘historic immunity from state and local control,’” Enabling Acts, or state constitutional disclaimer clauses, were nevertheless hobbled when the Court determined that the McCarran Act applied to tribes.  As historians David Wilkins and K. Tsianina Lomawaima note, “the Court was not inclined to give much weight one way or another to disclaimer clauses…minimiz[ing] the legal effect of disclaimer clauses.” Tribe's today have been forced to enter contracts with states and other local governments to retain and manage water rights on tribal lands.  Most alarmingly, however, as noted by dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens, the Indian people are not mentioned in the McCarran Amendment, and so “[n]othing in the McCarran Amendment…can be read as limiting the jurisdiction of the federal courts,” setting yet another ominous precedent seemingly at odds with treaty obligations and the canon of American Indian law first envisioned by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1832.

References

Nichols, Roger L. The American Indian: Past and Present. 6th ed. Norman, Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma Press. 2008.