Northern Arapaho tribe leaders celebrated a U.S. Supreme Court victory Thursday in a lawsuit seeking $1.5 million in compensation from the federal government for medical expenses.
Tribal leaders said the decision protects the sovereignty of the Northern Arapaho and other tribes.
The 5-4 opinion filed Wednesday resolves a complaint the tribe filed in 2021 in U.S. District Court alleging that the federal Indian Health Service had refused to properly cover costs the tribe incurred in operating federal health care programs on the Wind River Indian Reservation. At issue was whether the IHS was obligated to cover certain administrative costs the tribe incurred when it contracted for services with third parties.
“When it comes to allocating health care dollars, Indian reservations are often forgotten and left behind,” said Lee Spoonhunter, a member of the Northern Arapaho Business Council.
He called the case a “unique contest over tribal sovereignty,” and said the IHS is “severely underfunded,” making local autonomy important to providing effective services.
“We’re able to assess people’s problems,” he said, and use the IHS funds to “provide a better system of care.”
In a discussion that included words that might make a CPA cry (“Although IHS’s obligation to pay contract support costs is limited by section 5326, the limitations in this provision do not prevent the payment of costs incurred through required expenditures of program revenues under self-determination contracts.”). The court found that the government made improper payments of approximately $1.5 million to the tribe over a two-year period.
Arcanum aside, the Supreme Court upheld tribal rights enumerated in the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act.
“The fact that Contracting Tribes can act unilaterally is a natural consequence of self-determination.”
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
“The Administration argues that tribes should not receive contract support fees … because doing so would give tribes flexibility to spend their revenues on a broader range of activities than IHS can provide,” the opinion states.[T]The fact that the Contracting Tribes can act unilaterally in this regard is a natural consequence of self-determination.”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 18-page opinion, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Serious
The Northern Arapaho Business Council hailed the decision as a “significant victory” for all tribal sovereignty, not just for its Wyoming members.
“We are very pleased and honored to contribute to that fight and lead the way forward,” Councilman Spoonhunter said.
“This ruling upholds the promise of the Indian Self-Determination Act, which Congress passed to compensate tribes for the costs of operating health care programs,” the council said in a statement. “Any judicial decision to the contrary would have cost tribes alone millions of dollars and resulted in cuts to services and programs that communities rely on.”
The dissenters agreed that IHS was required to, and did, incur many administrative costs associated with the tribes’ operation of health care services that it carried out through local management arrangements with federal agencies. At issue was whether some of the third-party contract administrative costs were part of the IHS “program” or were somehow separate and nonreimbursable.
“This is a step in the right direction to get healthcare where it needs to be,” Spoonhunter said, “but it also shows we still have a long way to go.”
A federal district court in Wyoming ruled against the Northern Arapaho at first instance, but the tribe appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which overturned the Wyoming decision.
The federal government appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. Wind River Family & Community Healthcare CEO Richard Brannon brought the issue to the tribe’s attention, the business council said. The Northern Arapaho tribe’s appeal included Xavier Becerra, v. The Northern Arapaho Tribe and Xavier Becerra merged. v. San Carlos Apaches.
