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FORT DUCHESNE, Uintah County — The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation will appeal a district court judge's decision to dismiss portions of its water rights lawsuit.
U.S. District Court Judge Jill Parrish moved Tuesday to dismiss nine of the tribe's 11 claims against state and federal officials and agencies that the tribe alleges have mishandled tribal lands and water and discriminated against the tribe when it comes to water resources and infrastructure near its reservation.
The only two claims left in place relate to water in the Green River and water storage in the Flaming Gorge Reservoir.
The Ute Tribe's concerns go back decades, but the current lawsuit dates back to 2018. At the time, the tribe sued only the federal government, but the state later intervened as a defendant against the Ute Tribe's wishes. The case was partially dismissed in 2021 and transferred from a District of Columbia court to Utah.
The tribe pointed to a number of treaties and acts as the basis for its claims that the federal and state governments had broken their trust responsibility to the tribe.
But Parrish disagreed with those arguments and said the statute of limitations had passed and that the tribe had failed to adequately state some of its claims.
Ute Indian Tribal Business Committee Chairman Julius T. Murray III, however, argued in a news release Wednesday that the Ute Tribe is one of only two Indian tribes in the country with a federal statute that designates its Indian irrigation project as an Indian "trust asset." He also pointed to an 1899 federal statute that obligates the secretary of the Interior Department to secure to Ute Indians "the quantity of water needed for their present and prospective wants."
"If these two statutes do not expressly accept trust responsibilities to the Ute Tribe on behalf of the United States, then no federal statute does," Murray said.
Broader consequences
The Ute Tribe's arguments hinge on trust doctrine, or the federal government's legal obligation to protect tribal treaty rights and resources and support tribal self-government and economic prosperity. The doctrine has been a pillar of federal Indian law.
Ute leaders said Tuesday's ruling, along with the recent Supreme Court ruling in Arizona v. Navajo Nation, will have dire ripple effects across Indian Country. In both cases, judges ruled the government does not owe either tribe legally enforceable trust duties when it comes to their water rights.
"(The rulings) ignore more than a century of legal precedent and impose burdens that make it nearly impossible for any Indian tribe to ever hold the United States legally accountable for its mismanagement of Indian trust assets," said the Ute Indian Tribal Business Committee in a statement.
The Tribal Business Committee also faulted the Biden administration for "aggressively fighting to weaken the federal government's trust responsibility to Indian tribes."
"In both this case and Arizona v. Navajo Nation, the Biden administration sided with state and local governments over Indian interests and aggressively litigated against Indian tribes in order to defeat legitimate legal claims against the federal government," said committee chairman Julius Murray III. "We now see the Biden administration for what it is, one of the most anti-Indian administrations in more than a half-century."
Beyond appealing its own lawsuit, the Ute Tribe said it plans to take the lead in advocating for Congress to take action to counteract the Arizona v. Navajo Nation ruling.
