Chinook Indian Nation v. Burgum

What happened

The Chinook Indian Nation asked the courts to resolve a question the federal government has long treated as political: can a federal court recognize an Indian tribe? Tribal Business News reports that the Nation's petition pointed to language in the Federally Recognized Indian Tribe List Act of 1994 that refers to recognition "by a decision of a United States court," and to what the Nation called a long-standing conflict among federal courts.

The Ninth Circuit's decision in the case, No. 24-3629, is dated June 17, 2025 on the Supreme Court's docket. According to Tribal Business News, it held that the List Act's findings do not create judicial power to recognize tribes and affirmed dismissal of the suit for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The district court had held that recognition is a non-justiciable political question.

The Nation filed its petition for certiorari on September 12, 2025. The Supreme Court's docket for No. 25-313, Chinook Indian Nation v. Burgum, shows the petition was denied on March 23, 2026. Tribal Business News says the order gave no explanation.

A denial of review is not a ruling on the merits. It leaves the Ninth Circuit's decision in place. The same report says the Nation's path to federal acknowledgment now runs through Congress or the Interior Department's administrative process, and quotes the Nation's chairman, Tony Johnson, calling the denial "not an end, but a continuation of our efforts."

Good to know. The account of the Ninth Circuit's reasoning and the Nation's arguments comes from a single trade-press report.

Summarized with AI assistance from 4 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error