United States Fifth Circuit

In a suit by a state challenging the Department of the Interior's notice-and-comment regulations governing states' assertion of their sovereign immunity in response to a tribe's statutory good-faith suit regarding gaming negotiations, the judgment of the district court in favor of defendant-agency is reversed and remanded where: 1) the issue was ripe even though the Secretary has not made a substantive determination on the tribe's gaming license; 2) the State has standing to sue; and 3) the Secretary lacked authority to promulgate the regulations.

Appellate Information

• Decided 09/13/2007
• Published 09/13/2007

Judges

• EDITH H. JONES, Chief Judge:, Before JONES, Chief Judge, and KING and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Fifth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• William T. Deane, Asst. Atty. Gen. (argued), General Litigation Div., Austin, TX, for Plaintiff-Appellant., Bridget Garcia, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Washington, DC, for U.S., U.S. Dept. of Interior and Dirk Kempthorne., Lane Madison McFadden (argued), U.S. Dept. of Justice, Environment & Natural Resources Div., Washington, DC, John Francis Paniszczyn, San Antonio, TX, for U.S., Edmund Clay Goodman (argued), Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, Portland, OR, Jennifer Hughes, Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker, Washington, DC, for Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas.