Courthouse News Service
(CN) — A federal judge on Tuesday rebuffed the bid by Mendocino County, California, to throw out an amended lawsuit brought by the Round Valley Indian Tribes over cannabis raids on their lands last year.
While U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Illman in Eureka had previously agreed with the county that the tribes’ tribal sovereignty claims were legally insufficient — insofar as they implied that California’s criminal law couldn’t be enforced on tribal lands — the amended claims fared better.
The tribe argues in its amended complaint filed in February that the Mendocino County sheriff’s raids on their reservation were intended to enforce county ordinances and code provisions rather than state criminal law, which would be a violation of federal prohibitions against the enforcement of local regulations on tribal land.
Illman rejected Mendocino County’s argument that the new claims should be stricken because they mirrored the previous claims the judge had dismissed without leave to amend.
The previous dismissal was concerned with the status of California state cannabis laws, which the judge found to be criminal and enforceable on the reservation under Public Law 280, the federal statute that delineates states’ jurisdiction over Indian lands.
By contrast, Illman said, the new claims are predicated on factual questions concerning Mendocino County’s motives, the procedure used for obtaining the search warrants, as well as the scope and the execution of the warrants, which require a different analysis and rely on separate, established case law.
“Even though the new claims fall under the identical titles of PL 280 jurisdiction and tribal sovereignty, the legal and factual questions are completely different, and the new and old claims cannot be considered duplicates of each other,” Illman wrote.
The judge also denied Mendocino County’s separate bid to dismiss the amended claims for failing to state a legally valid claim.
“The court finds that plaintiffs have stated enough facts to sufficiently allege that the search warrants violated the Fourth Amendment,” he said. “In addition to their cannabis-specific elements, the warrants also authorize the investigation and seizure of property related to statutory violations that may not otherwise have been authorized in Indian country.”
Attorneys for the tribe and for the county didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
The Round Valley Indian Tribes sued Humboldt and Mendocino counties, their sheriffs and the California Highway Patrol in April of last year, claiming officers had unlawfully carried out a series of raids on their properties without valid warrants and destroyed hundreds of cannabis plants.
The tribe says the deputies told them they were looking for environmental violations involving “river water, parole violations and illegal cannabis cultivation, sale and manufacturing.”
California tribe can proceed with suit over cannabis raids under amended legal theory
