Oneida Indian Nation v. Phillips

Citation981 F.3d 157
Decision Date24 November 2020
Docket Number19-2737,August Term 2019
Parties ONEIDA INDIAN NATION, Plaintiff-Counter Defendant-Appellee, v. Melvin L. PHILLIPS, Sr. Individually and as Trustee, Melvin L. Phillips Sr./Orchard Party Trust, Defendants-Counter Claimants-Appellants.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit)

981 F.3d 157

ONEIDA INDIAN NATION, Plaintiff-Counter Defendant-Appellee,
v.
Melvin L. PHILLIPS, Sr.
Individually and as Trustee, Melvin L. Phillips Sr./Orchard Party Trust, Defendants-Counter Claimants-Appellants.

19-2737
August Term 2019

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: June 24, 2020
Decided: November 24, 2020


Michael R. Smith (David A. Reiser, on the brief), Washington, DC, for Plaintiff-Counter Defendant-Appellee, Oneida Indian Nation.

Joseph R. Membrino, Cooperstown, NY, (Claudia L. Tenney, Clinton, NY on the brief), for Defendants-Counter Claimants-Appellants, Melvin L. Phillips, Sr. and the Melvin L. Phillips, Sr./Orchard Party Trust.

Before: Cabranes, Lohier, and Menashi, Circuit Judges.

Judge Menashi concurs in part and concurs in the judgment in a separate opinion.

José A. Cabranes, Circuit Judge:

The principal question presented in this matter concerns the tribal right to possession of land under the Indian Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution,1 federal treaties and statutes, and federal common law.

Defendants-Counter Claimants-Appellants Melvin L. Phillips, Sr. and the Melvin L. Phillips, Sr./Orchard Party Trust (together, "Phillips") appeal from a July 31, 2019 judgment entered in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Glenn T. Suddaby, Chief Judge ) principally granting the motion of Plaintiff-Counter Defendant-Appellee Oneida Indian Nation of New York ("the Nation") for judgment on the pleadings on its claims for declaratory and injunctive relief. Phillips also appeals the District Court's decision and order dated November 15, 2018 granting the Nation's motion to dismiss Phillips's counterclaim.

On appeal, Phillips argues that the District Court erred by granting: (1) the Nation's motion for judgment on the pleadings; and (2) the Nation's motion to dismiss Phillips's counterclaim.

We hold that: (1) the District Court correctly granted the Nation's motion for judgment on the pleadings because title was not properly transferred to Phillips, and Phillips's defenses do not raise any issues of material fact that would preclude the requested declaratory and injunctive relief sought by the Nation; and (2) the District Court did not err by declining to apply an immovable property exception to tribal sovereign immunity in dismissing Phillips's counterclaim.

Accordingly, we AFFIRM the November 15, 2018 decision and order and the July 31, 2019 final judgment of the District Court.

981 F.3d 161

I. BACKGROUND

We draw the facts, which are undisputed unless specifically noted, from the District Court's decisions and orders dated November 15, 2018 and July 31, 20192 and from the record before us.

A. Factual Background

This suit arises from a disputed tract of 19.6 acres of land in the Town of Vernon in Oneida County, New York, over which both the Nation and Phillips assert ownership ("the 19.6 Acre Parcel"). Before contact with Europeans, the Oneida Indian Nation owned and occupied over six million acres of land in the territory that would later become New York State.3 Under the United States Constitution, Indian relations were reserved exclusively to the federal government.4 Throughout the 1780s and 1790s, the United States entered into several treaties with the Nation confirming the Nation's right of possession of their lands until the United States purchased those lands.5 These treaties were incorporated into federal law by the Nonintercourse Act of 1790, subsequently codified at 25 U.S.C. § 177, which prohibited the conveyance of Indian lands without the consent of the United States.6 In 1794, by signing the Treaty of Canandaigua, the United States recognized approximately 300,000 acres of the Nation's land as "their reservation[ ]."7 The 19.6 Acre Parcel disputed in this case was located within that reservation as of 1794. The State of New York has never attempted to obtain the 19.6 Acre Parcel. The United States has not withdrawn the 19.6 Acre Parcel from the Nation's reservation.8

In 1838, the United States and various New York State Indian tribes, including

981 F.3d 162

the Nation, entered into the Treaty of Buffalo Creek, an agreement which "contemplated the eventual removal of all remaining Native Americans in New York to reservation lands in Kansas."9

On June 25, 1842, New York State entered into a treaty with the Nation (the "1842 Treaty") to purchase a portion of the Nation's land, paying certain members of the Nation described in the treaty as "the Orchard Party of the Oneida Indians residing in the town of Vernon county of Oneida."10 Prior to entering into the 1842 Treaty, New York State surveyed part of the reservation, by which it divided the land in question into four numbered lots.11 The 19.6 Acre Parcel is entirely within Lot 3 (referred to as the Marble Hill tract). The 1842 Treaty did not convey Lot 3 to New York State, but rather, listed the names of members of the Nation who intended to continue living within Lot 3.12

In 2013, a comprehensive settlement agreement in a civil lawsuit in the Northern District of New York, to which the United States was a party, was reached between the State of New York, Madison County, Oneida County, and the Nation to resolve all legal disputes regarding land, taxation, and governance.13 This agreement provided that the land designated as Lot 3 of the 1842 Treaty: (1) was excluded from the sale in the 1842 Treaty; (2) is "Nation Land" located within the Oneida reservation; (3) is subject to the Nation's assertion of "sovereignty" and "rights under federal law"; and (4) is not subject to state or local taxation or regulation.14 This settlement was approved by the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York (Lawrence E. Kahn, Judge ), which incorporated it into a memorandum decision and order dated March 4, 2014 and under which it thereafter retained enforcement jurisdiction.15

981 F.3d 163

The Nation's land surrounding the 19.6 Acre Parcel is called "the Orchard" or "Marble Hill."16 The United States has recognized that there is one Oneida Indian Nation in New York State, and some of its members live in Marble Hill.

Although all parties concede that Phillips is a member of the Nation, Phillips has on several occasions asserted that the Orchard Party or Marble Hill Oneidas are a separate tribe from the Nation, and he has claimed to represent that separate tribe. On September 1, 2015, Phillips recorded a quitclaim deed with a trust declaration titled "Melvin L. Phillips, Sr./Orchard Party Trust" (the "Orchard Party Trust" or "trust"), naming himself both as grantor of the 19.6 Acre Parcel and as sole trustee of the trust.17 The declaration states that Phillips "hereby transfers and conveys to the Trustee [i.e. , Phillips] (by deed recorded in the Oneida County Clerk's Office) certain real property as more particularly and specifically described on the attached Schedule A ...."18 Schedule A of the trust instrument describes four parcels of land.19 "Parcel IV" comprises the 19.6 Acre Parcel in question and the access road/driveway leading to it from Marble Road.20 The trust documents state that the 19.6 Acre Parcel is composed of "tribal lands belonging to the Oneida Nation/Orchard Hill Party," that Phillips is a "spokesman" and "representative" of the Orchard Party, and that the land was "under the stewardship of Melvin L. Phillips, Sr."21

B. Procedural History

The Nation filed this action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York on September 18, 2017, asserting, inter alia , its possessory rights over the 19.6 Acre Parcel identified in the trust deed and seeking: (1) declaratory relief stating that neither Phillips nor the Orchard Party Trust "owns or has any property interest in the 19.6 acres" and that the trust instrument and quitclaim deed Phillips recorded "are invalid and void so far as they concern the [19.6 Acre Parcel];" and (2) an injunction prohibiting Phillips and the trust from claiming the 19.6 Acre Parcel or clouding its title.22 Phillips filed an answer and a counterclaim, which the Nation moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6).23 Invoking the District Court's supplemental jurisdiction, Phillips's counterclaim requested (1) a declaration stating that the Nation does not have a property interest in the 19.6 Acre Parcel and that the quitclaim deed and trust are valid with respect to the 19.6 Acre Parcel; and (2) that the Nation be enjoined from claiming the 19.6 Acre Parcel or clouding its title.24

The parties agreed that: (1) the 19.6 Acre Parcel was within the lands recognized by the United States in the 1794

981 F.3d 164

Treaty of Canandaigua as comprising the Nation's reservation; (2) the 19.6 Acre Parcel was never conveyed to New York State; and (3) the 1842 Treaty with New York State reserved the 19.6 Acre Parcel and certain other parcels from cession and declared that members of the Nation would continue to occupy those parcels "collectively in the same manner and with the same right, title and interest therein as appertained to them, the party so...

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