An order by the Department of the Interior Board of Indian Appeals administrative judge gives the two local grassroots citizen groups their day in court to argue the merits of their case to challenge the expansion of tribal-casino territory.

The Journal received a press release Tuesday from Preservation of Los Olivos (P.O.L.O.) and Preservation of Santa Ynez (POSY), making the announcement.

“We are gratified that the Department of Interior will consider the community’s administrative appeal on the merits,” stated Mark Rochefort, litigation counsel for POLO and POSY, in the press release on Tuesday.

The legal challenge against the federal government by the two groups began in 2005 after the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors declined to appeal the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ decision to place 6.9 acres across the highway from the Chumash Casino and Resort into federal trust status.

 

“If we had not filed the appeal five years ago, this expansion would have set a dangerous precedent for tribal expansion,” stated Kathryn Bowen, spokesperson for P.O.L.O., in the same release. “We now know the 6.9-acre parcel was just the beginning as Chairman Armenta himself has stated in testimony during Senate Committee hearings. We are satisfied that we will finally have our day in court to challenge this badly flawed process.”

The two groups say communities all over the country are impacted by tribal-casino land expansion through “fee to trust.”  P.O.L.O. and POSY’s case has had national repercussions.

 

“The argument that was developed to contest fee to trust in P.O.L.O. and POSY’s case was partially adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States in its February 2009 opinion in Carcieri (Governor of Rhode Island) v. Salazar (Secretary of the Interior),” said Lana Marcussen, P.O.L.O. and POSY’s legal consultant.

That case involved a dispute between the governor of Rhode Island and the federal Secretary of the Interior. In the ruling, made in October 2008 and released in February, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that tribes that were not under federal jurisdiction as of 1934 cannot put land into trust.

“In addition, the research work that P.O.L.O. and POSY did to factually develop their case was used in a second Supreme Court opinion,” said Kathy Cleary, P.O.L.O. board president, in the press release. “Just two weeks after Carcieri, the Supreme Court came down with a constitutional opinion that even Congress does not have the right to remove lands from state jurisdiction, implicating whether the mechanism of fee-to-trust is valid at all.

 

“We are all relieved that we are finally to this point and we thank the people who have spent time and donated money to support this case. Common sense told us that the legal system would agree that people impacted by land taken out of state jurisdiction should have the right to object.

“It has been a long and frustrating five years but the legal system worked.”

Members of P.O.L.O. and POSY declined to be interviewed beyond the scope of the press release without their attorney present, citing their desire to be accurate.

The next P.O.L.O. Town Hall meeting is slated for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Grange in Los Olivos.

 

— Staff Report