COLT submitted an amicus brief to United States District Court for the District of Columbia, in May, to grant a preliminary injunction blocking the Department of the Interior’s reconsideration of Scotts Valley’s final gaming eligibility determination.
Background:
COLT strongly supported the 2023 Part 151 amendments because they help large land base tribes achieve their self-determination objectives. COLT views the right to a permanent homeland as essential for all tribes. What happens in one land-into-trust decision can impact all others across the country. The bests interests of all of Indian Country are served by keeping politics out of those processes, strictly following the law, and acting consistently with the Department’s many strong supporting tribes’ self-determination, including the land-into-trust process. In short, COLT supports regular order in land-into-trust processes.
Regular order does not include consideration of mere anti-competitive arguments from other governments. Such arguments are regrettably common, highly speculative and not something to even be addressed under federal law. COLT submitted comments summarizing those views in the Part 151 reform process, and again during the Environmental Assessment process for Scotts Valley’s land, and again as an amicus curiae in support of the United States with respect to the Coquille Indian Tribe land-int-trust EIS litigation in December 2024 when competing tribes challenged that decision in administrative litigation.
These are the reasons why COLT filed the attached amicus curiae brief in support of Scotts Valley’s motion for preliminary injunction, consistent with COLT’s stalwart defense of tribal sovereignty and tribal lands. It is about the foundational principle of land as central to tribal sovereignty. Indeed, one of the express purposes of COLT in its Section 17 charter is to advocate for “legislative, regulatory, and policy reforms to improve protection, development and restoration of Indian land and assets to ensure the most beneficial use of lands for tribes and their individual Indian landowners.”
Additional Background:
The History behind these actions by COLT, is in accordance with our Articles of Incorporation Section 8.2. Advocating for legislative, regulatory and policy reforms to improve issues unique to tribes that govern large land bases:
In October 2021, the Department of the Interior (Department) held consultations on the protection and restoration of tribal homelands and used the feedback from these consultations to inform draft revisions to the part 151 regulations. COLT’s feedback was extensively considered and included thereafter. The Department then held four consultation sessions on the draft revisions in May 2022.
Utilizing feedback from those consultations, the Department published the proposed rule on December 5, 2022, 87 FR 74334, and held three Tribal consultation sessions during the public comment period. The first Tribal consultation was held in person on January 13, 2023, at the Bureau of Land Management Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona.
The next two Tribal consultations were conducted virtually on Zoom, which occurred on January 19, 2023, and January 30, 2023. Following the consultation sessions, the Department accepted written comments until March 1, 2023. Again, COLT participated extensively and our feedback was significantly incorporated by DOI.
COLT participated in person during the above dates and times and provided oral and written testimony, with the key focus of keeping States, Counties, Organizations and Individuals from slowing down the process. COLT recommendations were included in the final rule (88 FR 86222) on December 6, 2023.
To be clear, COLT supports all Tribes’ rights to a homeland and all Tribes’ interests in taking land into trust. We are and will defend the 25 C.F.R. Section 151 to protect the land into trust rules/regulations we fought so hard for, that benefits all Tribes, but in particular Large Land Based Tribes.
The current actions taken to influence land-into-trust can set us back 50 years and we will once again be plagued with challenges from anyone to stop Tribes from acquiring lands if we do not take a principled stand now for regular order in the land-into-trust process. What happens in one lands decision can impact us all.
This is the first time the land-into-trust regulations have been revised by the BIA. The original regulations were promulgated in 1980 and it has been 45 years since the original regulations were provided. The updated land into trust regulations are extremely important to protect and reestablish tribal homelands for COLT and all other sister tribal communities, via presumptions for various land into trust decisions and decision timelines on the BIA.
Media Coverage
Daily Republic on May 22, 2025
Warring tribes over Vallejo land rights go to court Friday
https://www.dailyrepublic.com/news/warring-tribes-over-vallejo-land-rights-go-to-court-friday/article_e998acbc-c56f-4bfc-90e7-8f0334f95e3d.html
Times Herald on May 22,2025
Scotts Valley Casino in Vallejo gets support of the Coalition of Large Tribes
Law 360 on May 22, 2025
Coalition Backs Calif. Tribe’s Fight Over $700M Casino Project