Oneida foreclosure

N.Y. Second Circuit Court won’t rule on Oneida Indian Nation reservation status in foreclosure case

Published: Tuesday, August 21, 2012

 

By CAITLIN TRAYNOR
Dispatch Staff Writer
Twitter.com/DispatchCaitlin

NEW YORK -- One decision is left to be made in the foreclosure case between the Oneida Indian Nation and Madison and Oneida counties in federal courts. And the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that it won’t do it.

In a decision dated Aug. 16, the Second Circuit said it wouldn’t rehear arguments in the case over whether or not the Nation’s reservation was ever disestablished.

The foreclosure case between the Oneida Indian Nation and Madison and Oneida counties reached the Supreme Court last year but after the Nation waived its sovereign immunity, which voided half of the arguments in the case, the Supreme Court kicked the decision on the status of its reservation back to the Second Circuit.

Later last year the Second Circuit said it wouldn’t make a decision on its status, advised the lower court to do the same and asked that the issue be sent back to state court for clarification.

Before that could happen, Madison County submitted an application for the entire Second Circuit Court to rehear the case.

Because of the 2003 ruling in Sherrill, which said the reservation wasn’t disestablished, the court said it didn’t have authority to reverse that decision without an en banc hearing, or arguments heard by the entire court instead of just a three-judge panel.

Last week, the court ruled that it would not do that.

Although disappointed but not surprised, county officials are expected to meet Wednesday to decide what their next step will be, but Administrative Assistant Mark Scimone said “since the Supreme Court recently granted review of this issue, it hopefully will again.”

David Shraver, an attorney from Nixon Peabody, the law firm that represents the county in this case, said “applications for rehearing en banc (by the full court) are rarely granted by the Second Circuit.”

“Since the Supreme Court granted review of this question once, it may look favorably on a petition for a writ of certiorari to review it again,” he said. “The land claim has been dismissed and is not affected by this development.”

Nation Spokesman Dan Smith said “we are pleased that today’s ruling puts an end to legal challenges to the status of the Oneida reservation. This ruling is good news for Oneida members, our more than 4,500 employees and their families and for the entire Central New York region. This decision allows everyone to finally move beyond the conflicts of the past and chart a new, more prosperous path for the future.

“This Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling falls in line with two previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings that the Oneida Nation reservation was never disestablished and that the Treaty of Canandaigua remains valid in the eyes of the federal government. This ruling puts an end to more than a decade of litigation over the existence of the Oneida reservation.”

http://www.oneidadispatch.com/articles/2012/08/21/news/doc50342697719ed543333191.txt