The Supreme Court dominated towards the Navajo Nation on Thursday in a water rights case, rejecting the tribe’s go well with towards the federal authorities in a dispute over entry to the drought-depleted Colorado River system.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh writing for almost all. He stated the 1868 peace treaty on the coronary heart of the case didn’t require the federal authorities to take “affirmative steps” to safe water for the Navajo.
In dissent, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by the court docket’s three liberal members, stated the tribe’s request was extra modest than that, including that the federal government had violated the plain phrases of the treaty and had given the tribe an epic runaround.
“To date, their efforts to find out what water rights the United States holds for them have produced an experience familiar to any American who has spent time at the Department of Motor Vehicles,” he wrote. “The Navajo have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to help them, only to be told (repeatedly) that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another.”
He added that the runaround had endured for many years: “When this routine first began in earnest, Elvis was still making his rounds on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’”
The Navajo Tribe is without doubt one of the largest within the United States, with greater than 300,000 enrolled members, Justice Kavanaugh wrote. And its reservation, a product of the treaty, is the most important within the nation, spanning greater than 17 million acres in elements of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. It is in regards to the dimension of West Virginia.
In the arid West, Justice Kavanaugh wrote, “water has long been scarce, and the problem is getting worse.”
The tribe sued the federal authorities in 2003, in search of to compel it to evaluate the tribe’s wants and devise a plan to satisfy them. The states of Arizona, Colorado and Nevada intervened within the go well with, in search of to guard their very own entry to water from the Colorado River system.
As Justice Kavanaugh framed the query within the case, the tribe sought to drive the federal authorities to take concrete steps to acquire water for it.
“The Navajos do not contend that the United States has interfered with their access to water,” he wrote. “Rather, the Navajos argue that the United States must take affirmative steps to secure water for the tribe — for example, by assessing the tribe’s water needs, developing a plan to secure the needed water and potentially building pipelines, pumps, wells or other water infrastructure.”
The treaty, Justice Kavanaugh concluded, didn’t impose such an obligation.
“The historical record,” he wrote, “does not suggest that the United States agreed to undertake affirmative efforts to secure water for the Navajos — any more than the United States agreed to farm land, mine minerals, harvest timber, build roads or construct bridges on the reservation.”
The majority opinion was 13 pages and was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Amy Coney Barrett.
Justice Gorsuch’s dissent within the case, Arizona v. Navajo Nation, No. 21-1484, spanned 27 pages and stated the bulk had misunderstood historical past, the treaty and what the tribe sought.
The treaty, he wrote, promised the tribe that it may make the reservation its “permanent home.”
“As both parties surely would have recognized,” he wrote, “no people can make a permanent home without the ability to draw on adequate water.”
It adopted, Justice Gorsuch wrote, that the federal authorities had undertaken not less than some obligations.
“The Navajo have a simple ask: They want the United States to identify the water rights it holds for them,” he wrote. “And if the United States has misappropriated the Navajo’s water rights, the tribe asks it to formulate a plan to stop doing so prospectively.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Justice Gorsuch’s dissent.
As Justice Kavanaugh summarized his majority opinion from the Supreme Court bench on Thursday morning, Justice Gorsuch appeared forlorn. As the abstract neared its conclusion, he bowed his head and closed his eyes.
Chris Cameron contributed reporting.
Source: www.nytimes.com