Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land & Cattle Co. (554 U.S. 316)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 25, 2008 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 554 U.S. 316 · 128 S. Ct. 2709
- Decided
- June 25, 2008
- Term
- October Term 2007
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Roberts
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court. This case concerns the sale of fee land on a tribal reservation by a non-Indian bank to non-Indian individuals. Following the sale, an Indian couple, customers of the bank who had defaulted on their loans, claimed the bank discriminated against them by offering the land to non-Indians on terms more favorable than those the bank offered to them. The couple sued on that claim in Tribal Court; the bank contested the court’s jurisdiction. The Tribal Court concluded that it had jurisdiction and proceeded to hear the case. It ultimately ruled against the bank and awarded the Indian couple damages and the right to purchase a portion of the fee land. The question presented is whether the Tribal Court had jurisdiction to adjudicate a discrimination claim concerning the non-Indian bank’s sale of fee land it owned. We hold that it did not. I The Long Family Land and Cattle Company, Inc. (Long Company or Company), is a family-run ranching and farming operation incorporated under the laws of South Dakota. Its lands are located on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation. Once a massive, 60-million acre affair, the reservation was appreciably diminished by Congress in the 1880’s and at present consists of roughly 11 million acres located in Dewey and Ziebach Counties in north-central South Dakota. The Long Company is a respondent…
Excerpt of a 44,592-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.