Hodel v. Irving

What happened

Toward the end of the 19th century, Congress passed a series of land acts that divided reservation land into individual allotments. Through successive generations, those parcels were splintered into many undivided interests by inheritance. Congress did not take action to ease this fractionation of Indian lands until the Indian Land Consolidation Act of 1983.

Section 207 of that Act said that no undivided fractional interest in trust or restricted land within a tribe's reservation would pass by intestacy or devise. It would instead escheat, meaning pass, to the tribe if it represented 2 percent or less of the total acreage in the tract and had earned its owner less than $100 in the preceding year. Congress made no provision for compensation. Members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who were or represented heirs or devisees of tribe members who died while the original section was in effect, sued in federal court in South Dakota. The District Court upheld the statute, and the Court of Appeals reversed.

The Supreme Court affirmed, in an opinion by Justice O'Connor. It held that the heirs had standing and that the original version of section 207 effected a taking of their decedents' property without just compensation. The question before the Court was only the original version.

Congress then amended section 207. In Babbitt v. Youpee (1997), the Court held that the amended section did not cure the constitutional deficiency identified in Hodel v. Irving.

Good to know. The ruling covers the original version of the law, not its later amended version.

Summarized with AI assistance from 3 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error