{"id":15954,"date":"2011-12-13T18:11:40","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T23:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=15954"},"modified":"2011-12-14T11:57:59","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T16:57:59","slug":"american-indians-and-equal-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2011\/12\/american-indians-and-equal-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"American Indians and Equal Protection"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is the second in a series of posts addressing some of the most commonly asked questions regarding American Indians, Indian Tribes, and the law. The first post<\/a> addressed casinos, hunting and fishing rights, and taxes. This second post, unlike the first, is devoted to just one question, namely, why doesn\u2019t the unique legal treatment of Indian tribes or their members violate the Constitution\u2019s guarantee of equal protection?<\/p>\n

The U.S. Constitution\u2019s 14th Amendment provides, among other things, that \u201c[n]o state shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.\u201d The Constitution\u2019s text actually provides no comparable limitation on the federal government, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954<\/a> held that the 5th Amendment\u2019s Due Process Clause, which does apply to federal law, encompasses a nearly identical guarantee of equal protection.<\/p>\n

But this equal protection guarantee gets used with rigor by judges, in their review of challenged laws, only when the government is discriminating on certain grounds (e.g<\/em>., race or ethnicity), when the law impinges on certain fundamental rights, or, every so often, when a court believes that the government has acted so arbitrarily or perniciously that the government\u2019s action cannot fairly be sustained.<\/p>\n

It is the initial set of these circumstances\u2014discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, or ancestry\u2014that may seem, at least at first blush, to be rather problematic when it comes the government\u2019s relationship to Indian tribes and their members. After all, tribal membership\u2014which is a prerogative of the tribes, but is in some manner sanctioned by the federal government\u2014almost always requires proof of tribal ancestry, often described in terms of a blood quantum<\/a> such as one-quarter (a grandparent) or one-eighth (a great-grandparent).<\/p>\n

Thus, when the government treats Indians differently from non-Indians, it is effectively, even if indirectly, treating persons differently on the basis of race or ethnicity or ancestry. In turn, one would think that the equal protection guarantee would be operating in full gear every time a law or regulation is enacted or enforced that relies on the distinction of being an Indian tribe or tribal member. To pose the issue more dramatically, why isn\u2019t Title 25 of the U.S. Code, which after all is labeled \u201cIndians,\u201d one large conglomeration of presumptive equal protection violations?<\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously issued its formal answer to this question in 1974 in a case titled Morton v. Mancari<\/em><\/a>, which involved a challenge by non-Indian employees of the Interior Department\u2019s Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Bureau\u2019s promotion preference for Indians. The Court rather matter-of-factly declared that \u201cthis preference does not constitute \u2018racial discrimination\u2019\u201d and \u201cis not even a \u2018racial\u2019 preference.\u201d In a critical footnote, the Court explained that \u201c[t]he preference is not directed towards a \u2018racial\u2019 group consisting of \u2018Indians’; instead, it applies only to members of \u2018federally recognized\u2019 tribes. This operates to exclude many individuals who are racially to be classified as \u2018Indians.\u2019 In this sense, the preference is political rather than racial in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, the fact that the tribes are sovereign entities means that relationships, including employment relationships, between the federal government and one or more tribes or its members (who are citizens of these separate sovereigns) can and ought to be viewed as fundamentally political in nature, at least from a constitutional perspective. What the Court sidesteps, of course, is the above-noted reality that the citizenry of these separate sovereigns is overwhelmingly a function of ancestry or race or ethnicity and, as is not the case with foreign sovereigns, the federal government has regularly approved, directly or indirectly, this type of tribal citizenship criterion.<\/p>\n

Intellectually, the Mancari<\/em> opinion can leave one quite disappointed if not perplexed, especially if one focuses narrowly on the Court\u2019s analysis within the confines of equal protection doctrine. There is, of course, more to the complicated history of federal-Indian relations, and thus to the Mancari<\/em> decision, than any clause-specific analysis can attempt to capture, and the striking inadequacy or superficiality of Mancari<\/em>\u2019s reasoning can no doubt be partly explained on that basis.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the reality is that there remains a degree of tension\u2014culturally and constitutionally\u2014inherent in the special relationship between the federal government and the Indian tribes and tribal members within the nation\u2019s borders. Perhaps there will come a time when the Court can speak with greater precision or candor, or within a different doctrinal landscape, and this tension can be diminished as a result. That said, the Court has ventured close to the meaning of Mancari<\/em> only once in recent decades, in a 2000 case involving Hawaii<\/a>, and has otherwise shown little interest in either revisiting or clarifying its original reasoning. Thus we are left with Mancari<\/em>, with the tension that it leaves unresolved and the questions that it leaves unanswered.<\/p>\n

For further reading, I recommend Bethany R. Berger, Reconciling Equal Protection and Federal Indian Law<\/em>, 98 California Law Review 1165 (2010)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the second in a series of posts addressing some of the most commonly asked questions regarding American Indians, Indian Tribes, and the law. The first post addressed casinos, hunting and fishing rights, and taxes. This second post, unlike the first, is devoted to just one question, namely, why doesn\u2019t the unique legal treatment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,124,122,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-federal-indian-law","category-public","category-race-and-the-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}