On the recordNovember 16, 2015
There have already been 18 court and Federal agency rulings favoring Tohono O'odham Nation on this issue, and we can dismiss those court decisions by Federal judges--the Ninth Circuit--State judges, administrative hearings with the Interior. We can dismiss them as not meaning anything. Obviously, the state of the law that was passed in 1986 means nothing. Obviously, these court cases and judicial decisions mean nothing because this legislation, H.R. 308, seeks to usurp the law in 1986 and to overrule judicial decisions that have been made. We keep hearing about the fact that there is no standing in those decisions. The latest was a unanimous decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that confirmed, once again, the legality of the tribe's West Valley project. We keep hearing the same myths about what the numerous legal outcomes actually mean for the nation. For instance, we heard just now that the nation won nothing on the merits and that all of the cases had merely been dismissed on the draconian doctrine of sovereign immunity. It doesn't take a law degree to realize that, while the court dismissed some claims for this reason, the courts have, in fact, ruled on the merits of several of the claims in favor of the nation. For example, Judge David Campbell, a George W.…
