Court won't hear New York City teacher vaccine dispute
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is declining to wade into a lawsuit filed by four New York City public school employees over a policy that they be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Lower courts had previously allowed the policy to go into effect while litigation continued, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor had also rejected an emergency request that the policy be put on hold. The justices said Monday they wouldn't get involved in the dispute. As is typical the justices did not say anything in rejecting the case, and it was one of more than 100 the court turned away.
New York City began requiring public school employees to be vaccinated in the fall of 2021. Courts had declined to bar the city from enforcing their policy, which applies to some 150,000 employees and has religious and medical exemptions.
Three of the teachers involved in the case have been fired and a fourth has taken extended leave.
Justices reject states' appeal over cap on tax deductibility
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland to the 2017 tax law that capped federal tax deductions for state and local taxes.
The lawsuit had previously been dismissed by lower courts. It argued that the Republican-led tax law, signed by then-President Donald Trump, unfairly singled out high-tax states in which Democrats predominate.
The law caps a deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT, at $10,000. The lawsuit claimed that lawmakers crafted the provision to target Democratic states, interfering with the states' constitutionally granted taxing authority.
Legislation to raise the cap has passed the House of Representatives but not the Senate.
Justices reject county's claim to portion of Yakama lands
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Klickitat County's claim to a portion of the Yakama Indian Reservation, likely ending a dispute that has raged for more than a century.
The court denied the county's appeal without comment.
Klickitat County had argued that 121,465 acres in the southwestern portion of the reservation, including the eastern half of Mount Adams and the Glenwood Valley, were not actually included when the reservation was created.
"The Supreme Court's decision once again validates the continuing strength of our treaty rights under the United States Constitution," said Yakama Tribal Council Chairman Delano Saluskin. "The Yakama Nation will never compromise when our treaty is at stake."
The dispute involved ambiguous language in the tribe's Treaty of 1855 with the U.S. government.
Territorial Gov. Isaac Stevens, who drafted the treaty, wrote that the reservation's southwestern border passed "south and east of Mount Adams, to the spur whence flows the waters of the Klickatat and Pisco rivers."
The tribe said no such spur existed, and that the Yakama Nation had always understood that Mount Adams and land known as Tract D was reservation land.
That position was affirmed by the Indian Claims Commission in 1966, by an executive order by President Richard Nixon in 1972, and by federal surveyors in 1982, and by numerous earlier court cases.
Court denies Penobscot appeal over namesake river
By David Sharp
Associated Press
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined an appeal by the Penobscot Indian Nation in its fight with Maine over ownership and regulation of the tribe's namesake river.
It was a bitter defeat for the tribe that sued a decade ago, claiming the Penobscot River is part of its reservation.
Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis said it was a disappointing outcome in a legal case that goes to the "core identity of the Penobscot Nation."
"We see this as a modern day territorial removal by the state by trying to separate us from our ancestral ties to our namesake river," Francis told The Associated Press.
A federal judge previously ruled that the reservation includes islands of the river's main stem, but not the waters. There were appeals to a panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of appeals, and then to the full appeals court.
On Monday, the nation's top court without comment declined to hear the tribe's appeals over river regulation.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and Democratic Gov. Janet Mills had no immediate comment on Monday.
The ruling came as the Maine Legislature was considering several measures that relate to tribal sovereignty.
The most far-reaching legislative proposal would restore sovereignty rights forfeited by tribes under the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980. The House enacted the bill Monday, but it was pending in the Senate. It faces a possible veto by the governor.
The Penobscots, whose reservation is on an island in the river, sued in 2012 after then-Attorney General William Schneider issued an opinion that the tribe's territory was limited to islands.
The tribe said the lawsuit was necessary to protect tribal authority over its ancestral river and ensure sustenance rights. But state regulators argued that a win by the tribe would create "a two-tiered system" on the Penobscot that would be a detriment to the general public.
Francis said the Supreme Court's action was probably the end of the road for the appeal but he said the tribe wouldn't give up.
"We'll continue to see every avenue to remedy this," he said.
