On October 7, 2024, the Department of Treasury (Treasury) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued proposed regulations (Proposed Regulations) clarifying the federal tax classification of certain entities wholly owned by...more
In a momentous legal development, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon L. Gleason has vacated and remanded a decision by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to place a 787-square-foot parcel of land in downtown Juneau into...more
Generally, tribal lands held in trust by the federal government are exempt from state and local taxation under Section 5 of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (the Act). However, when non-Indians are involved in ownership...more
On December 5, 2022, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) published proposed revisions to 25 C.F.R. Part 151—the regulations governing the United States’ discretionary acquisition of land in trust for the...more
On April 26, 2022, the Arizona Supreme Court issued a significant unanimous decision addressing the applicability of a state ad valorem property tax on a power plant located on Indian land. The Arizona Supreme Court held that...more
Last week, the Department of the Interior issued Memorandum M-37069 regarding the Secretary of the Interior’s land into trust authority in Alaska, in keeping with the current administration’s expressed priority of recognizing...more
Fee-to-trust, sometimes also called land-into-trust, is the process by which tribes can have land taken into trust by the federal government. Congress authorized the Department of the Interior (DOI) to take land into trust...more
CLIENT ALERT: FAR Council Changes Rules Regarding Small Business Rerepresentation / Recertification and Multiple Award Contracts - On February 27, 2020, the FAR Council published a final rule that amends the Federal...more
On January 2, 2020, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) issued a proposed rule to create a new 25 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 82 that would establish procedures for a non-federally recognized Alaska Native entity to...more
On March 8, 2018, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation (the "Tribe") filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against the United States, the Department of the...more
The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision last Tuesday affirmed the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Patchak v. Zinke, holding that Congress through the Gun Lake Act, which reaffirms...more
On February 27, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Patchak v. Zinke, No. 16-498. No opinion commanded a majority of the Court, but six justices concluded that the plaintiff’s lawsuit under the Indian...more