Carcieri v. Salazar

Carcieri v. Salazar
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 3, 2008 Decided February 24, 2009
Full case name	Donald L. Carcieri, Governor of Rhode Island v. Ken L. Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, et al.
Docket no.	07-526
Citations	555 U.S. 379 (more) 129 S. Ct. 1058; 172 L. Ed. 2d 791
Case history
Prior	Carcieri v. Norton, 290 F. Supp. 2d 167 (D.R.I. 2003); Carcieri v. Norton, 423 F.3d 45 (1st Cir. 2005); Carcieri v. Kempthorne, 497 F.3d 15 (1st Cir. 2007)
Holding
The term "now under Federal jurisdiction" referred only to tribes that were federally recognized when the Indian Reorganization Act became law and the federal government could not take land into trust from tribes that were recognized after 1934.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · David Souter Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito
Case opinions
Majority	Thomas, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Breyer, Alito
Concurrence	Breyer
Concur/dissent	Souter, joined by Ginsburg
Dissent	Stevens
Laws applied
25 U.S.C. §§ 465, 479

Carcieri v. Salazar, 555 U.S. 379 (2009), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the federal government could not take land into trust that was acquired by the Narragansett Tribe in the late 20th century, as it was not federally recognized until 1983. While well documented in historic records and surviving as a community, the tribe was largely dispossessed of its lands while under guardianship by the state of Rhode Island before suing in the 20th century.

The Court ruled that the phrase of tribes "now under Federal jurisdiction" in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 referred only to those tribes that were federally recognized when the act was passed.^[1] It ruled that the federal government could not take land into trust for the Narragansett or other tribes that were federally recognized and acquired land after 1934.^[2]