NC Cherokees allow medical pot but NC does not. They also own their land which is rare for a tribe
BTW there are 400 US official tribes but vast majority are very small.
I think if they allow abortions on their land Supreme court cases may not matter but I am not a lawyer
Indian reservations have tribal sovereignty. Website:
“Tribal sovereignty refers to the right of American Indians and Alaska Natives to govern themselves. The U.S. Constitution recognizes Indian tribes as distinct governments and they have, with a few exceptions, the same powers as federal and state governments to regulate their internal affairs. Sovereignty for tribes includes the right to establish their own form of government, determine membership requirements, enact legislation and establish law enforcement and court systems.”
In that case I wonder why the state of NC gave the Cherokees permission to open 2 casinos? Was that just a formality
I did clinicals on a reservation in 1994, and while abortion was not prohibited, the facility I worked at only did them if the mother’s life was endangered (and this did happen while I was there). The nearest abortion clinic was 2 1/2 hours away in Albuquerque, but honestly, even if there was one on site, it would have gotten very little use because their culture didn’t believe in it. I realize things could have changed drastically in the meantime.
In OK…despite the Creeks having been “Given half of Oklahoma”…Gov. Stitt has already warned the tribes to not pull any of that sanctuary states shit.
I havent heard any response, but I assume the tribes wont stir the hornets nest on this subject. Would be nice to be wrong though.
I wonder if they could get away with abortions to tribal members though.
It hasn’t been very long. I’d expect that if states try to enforce bans on official Reservation land, there’d eventually be lawsuits by whichever tribes allow abortion (I don’t know what the stance currently is on this issue by any specific tribe, let alone by all of them; I expect it varies.) Of course, the lawsuits would probably eventually arrive at the Supreme Court –
This gets muddy–so at “core”, legally, the States do not have criminal law jurisdiction over tribes. However an act from the 1950s called Public Law 280, specifies a few specific States where the State will have criminal law jurisdiction over tribes in that State, it also allows for additional States to join this framework with the consent of local tribes, a number of States have gotten that consent (the tribes that consent to this are generally doing so in exchange for receiving various State government services which the tribe would be hard pressed to provide.)
States not covered by Public Law 280, essentially were nearly powerless to stop Indian gaming at all. States covered by 280, could stop Indian gaming solely on criminal law grounds, and only if it treated Indian gaming the same as any other type of gaming. This came to a head in the 1980s when California asserted it was going to stop an Indian casino under 280. The Federal courts ruled against California, basically saying 280 gave California criminal law jurisdiction in tribal lands, but nothing else. California operated a State lottery, a form of gambling. In the court’s opinion, this meant that the Indian casino wasn’t violating a California criminal law against gambling, but simply violating a California regulation on gaming, and 280 did not vest California with any regulatory power.
This would have led to probably an explosion in Indian casinos popping up in States not covered by 280, which might have been very unpopular in a number of States. At this point the Federal government stepped in and passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988. Unlike States, the Federal government has generally broad authority over the tribes (the States have very limited authority, for example their authority under 280 requires some level of tribal consent, and is actually a delegation of Federal power to the States, not an innate exercise of State power.)
Under the IGRA, gaming is broken into three Classes. Class I is basically “traditional Indian gaming”, these are “small games of chance for low stakes”, the States cannot regulate these at all, and these are allowed basically in any tribe anywhere without any State interference.
Class II are basically bingo halls and poker halls (technically, any card game where there is no banked cards and the card players are exclusively playing against other players, and not the house), Class II gambling tribes are allowed to operate basically without State interference if that State allows any similar sort of gaming of any form. If the State does not allow Class II gaming generally, the State can grant permission for a tribe to operate a Class II establishment, but is not required to do so.
Class III are essentially full casinos, with slot machines, dealer card games etc. Class III gaming has to be approved by the Indian Gaming Commission, which requires a compact to be negotiated between the State and the tribe, said compact has to also be signed off on by the Department of the Interior.
Since the North Carolina casinos are Class III facilities, North Carolina had to give its consent in the form of a tribal-state compact.
That would be an incredibly interesting case to follow. Justice Gorsuch, for one, is very big into tribal sovereignty and has been throughout his career. If he could pull Justice Roberts with him, I can easily see a tribe be allowed to offer abortion services on reservation land whereas the state has banned them.
Tell me about it.
Another thing to remember is that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has oversight over the tribes. I used to work for a tribe, as an employee in their administration, and while the tribe definitely had sovereignty that didn’t equate to being able to do what they wanted to. There were a lot of rules that we had to adhere to or face consequences. Even in my role as (in that job) a network administrator, I had to be careful to follow certain guidelines in terms of security, redundancy, and so on.
The “nuclear option” that the Feds have over any tribe is the ability to no longer recognize them as a tribe. That happens all the time. Basically, they say, “You are a sovereign nation until we say you aren’t.”
Relevant article:
until recently, birth control wasn’t widely available at IHS clinics, and even now, access to emergency contraceptives including Plan B is still sporadic and often requires a prescription. And if she did decide to get an abortion, many IHS clinics contract out their services to state service providers. [ . . . ]
“So many people have posed this question of whether the solution to not having access to abortion clinics within states would be to put a clinic on an Indian reservation,” said Leeds. "And, you know, it’s a fundamentally bad idea for a host of reasons."
Tribal reservations, she says, are not a safe haven to escape laws people are opposed to. She says Native women already have a fraught history with access to birth control and abortion, and Indian Health Service Clinics are banned from performing abortions except in certain circumstances because of the Hyde Amendment, which was passed in 1976 and prevents the use of government funds for abortion.
The problem appears not to be, at least in some cases, that the tribes themselves are opposed to abortion; but that health care in general and specifically reproductive health care is in short supply, and is to a significant extent dependent on state and federal providers and/or restrictions.