Court rules against Navajo Nation in Colorado River water rights case
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled against the Navajo Nation on Thursday in a dispute involving water from the drought-stricken Colorado River.
States that draw water from the river — Arizona, Nevada and Colorado — and water districts in California that are also involved in the case had urged the court to decide for them, which the justices did in a 5-4 ruling. Colorado had argued that siding with the Navajo Nation would undermine existing agreements and disrupt the management of the river.
The Biden administration had said that if the court were to come down in favor of the Navajo Nation, the federal government could face lawsuits from many other tribes.
Lawyers for the Navajo Nation had characterized the tribe's request as modest, saying they simply were seeking an assessment of the tribe's water needs and a plan to meet them.
The facts of the case go back to treaties that the tribe and the federal government signed in 1849 and 1868. The second treaty established the reservation as the tribe's "permanent home" — a promise the Navajo Nation says includes a sufficient supply of water. In 2003 the tribe sued the federal government, arguing it had failed to consider or protect the Navajo Nation's water rights to the lower portion of the Colorado River.
Writing for a majority made up of conservative justices, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that "the Navajos contend that the treaty requires the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajos — for example, by assessing the Tribe's water needs, developing a plan to secure the needed water, and potentially building pipelines, pumps, wells, or other water infrastructure."
But, Kavanaugh said, "In light of the treaty's text and history, we conclude that the treaty does not require the United States to take those affirmative steps."
Kavanaugh acknowledged that water issues are difficult ones.
"Allocating water in the arid regions of the American West is often a zero-sum situation," he wrote. It is important, he said, for courts to leave "to Congress and the President the responsibility to enact appropriations laws and to otherwise update federal law as they see fit in light of the competing contemporary needs for water."
A federal trial court initially dismissed the lawsuit, but an appeals court allowed it to go forward. The Supreme Court's decision reverses that ruling from the appeals court.
In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that he would have allowed the case to go forward and he characterized the Navajo's position as a "simple ask."
"Where do the Navajo go from here?" he wrote. "To date, their efforts to find out what water rights the United States holds for them have produced an experience familiar to any American who has spent time at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Navajo have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to help them, only to be told (repeatedly) that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another."
Gorsuch said one "silver lining" of the case may be that his colleagues in the majority recognized that the tribe may still be able to "assert the interests they claim in water rights litigation, including by seeking to intervene in cases that affect their claimed interests."
Gorsuch, a conservative and Colorado native who has emerged as a champion of Native rights since joining the court in 2017, was joined by the court's three liberals: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
During arguments in the case in March, Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that the Navajo Nation's original reservation was hundreds of miles away from the section of the Colorado River it now seeks water from.
Today, the Colorado River flows along what is now the northwestern border of the tribe's reservation, which extends into New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. Two of the river's tributaries, the San Juan River and the Little Colorado River, also pass alongside and through the reservation. Still, one-third of the some 175,000 people who live on the reservation, the largest in the country, do not have running water in their homes.
The government argued that it has helped the tribe secure water from the Colorado River's tributaries and provided money for infrastructure, including pipelines, pumping plants and water treatment facilities. But it said no law or treaty required the government to assess and address the tribe's general water needs. The states involved in the case argued that the Navajo Nation was attempting to make an end run around a Supreme Court decree that divvied up water in the Colorado River's Lower Basin.
In a statement, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren called the ruling "disappointing" and said the tribe's lawyers "continue to analyze the opinion and determine what it means for this particular lawsuit."
"My job as the President of the Navajo Nation is to represent and protect the Navajo people, our land, and our future," Nygren said. "The only way to do that is with secure, quantified water rights to the Lower Basin of the Colorado River."
Rita McGuire, a lawyer who represented states opposing the tribe's claims, said the court "ruled exactly right" and that "we're very pleased."
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Associated Press reporter Michael Phillis in St. Louis contributed to this report.
Justices rule against a man who was given 27 years in prison for having a gun
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a man whose conviction on gun charges was called into question by a recent high court decision is out of luck.
The court's conservatives were in the 6-3 majority against the man, Marcus DeAngelo Jones, who was given a 27-year prison sentence for violating a federal law meant to keep guns out of the hands of people with previous criminal convictions.
Jones had argued that he should be allowed another chance to get his conviction thrown out following a 2019 court decision. In that case, the justices ruled prosecutors must prove that people charged with violating federal gun laws knew they were not allowed to have a weapon.
Jones tried to reopen his case following the 2019 decision, but a federal appeals court ruled against him. The issue in the case is technical, though important, and involves when defendants can make their claims in court, not the facts of Jones' case.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court that people who have used up their appeals don't get another day in court "based solely on a more favorable interpretation of statutory law adopted after his conviction became final."
Only two instances, newly discovered evidence or the court's new interpretation of a constitutional provision, authorize a second bite at the apple under a 1996 federal law meant to limit federal appeals, Thomas wrote.
Most federal appeals court would have allowed Jones to reopen his case, but Thomas wrote that those decisions amounted to an "end-run around" the 1996 law, known as AEDPA.
In dissent, the three liberal justices wrote that the decision produces "bizarre outcomes" and "disturbing results."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that the ruling, coupled with other recent limits on appeals imposed by the court, have transformed "a statute that Congress designed to provide for a rational and orderly process of federal postconviction judicial review into an aimless and chaotic exercise in futility."
Jones was convicted in 2000 for being a felon in possession of a gun. His lawyers argued that he thought his record had been cleared and no longer was prohibited from having a gun.
The case is Jones v. Hendrix, 21-857.
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