Yurok Tribe v. Bureau of Reclamation
- William Orrick
- 3:20-cv-05891
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 8
In Yurok Tribe v. Bureau of Reclamation, Judge Orrick denied KID’s motion to intervene because the Tribe’s immunity waiver did not cover KID’s claims.
Klamath Irrigation District could not intervene in this case or file its proposed answer and crossclaim. The ruling also preserved the limited scope of the Yurok Tribe’s waiver of sovereign immunity and left the Bureau’s authority and the underlying Administrative Procedure Act claims unresolved in this order.
What happened
Yurok Tribe v. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation concerns the Bureau’s refusal to release 7,000 acre-feet of water for the Tribe’s 2020 Boat Dance ceremony. The Tribe sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing that the Bureau acted unlawfully by departing from its water-management plans.
Klamath Irrigation District sought to join the stayed case and file claims challenging the Bureau’s authority to allocate water from Upper Klamath Lake. The Tribe and the Bureau opposed intervention, arguing that those proposed claims would improperly require deciding water rights beyond the limited dispute raised by the Tribe.
Judge William H. Orrick denied KID’s motion to intervene. He ruled that the Tribe’s waiver of sovereign immunity covered only its challenge to the Bureau’s refusal to release water under the plans, not KID’s broader claims. He also said intervention would duplicate issues in another case where KID had already been allowed to intervene.
The detailed version
- Yurok Tribe v. Bureau of Reclamation · No. 3:20-cv-05891
- William Orrick
- May 16, 2022
Background
The Yurok Tribe sued the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation over its refusal to release water into the Klamath River for the Tribe’s 2020 Boat Dance, part of a traditional religious ceremony held in even-numbered years. The Tribe alleged that the Bureau’s departure from the 2019-2024 Klamath Project Operations Plan and the Interim Operations Plan, and its refusal to provide 7,000 acre-feet of water, violated the Administrative Procedure Act by being arbitrary and capricious.
The case was stayed while the Tribe and the Bureau discussed settlement. Klamath Irrigation District moved to intervene under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24. It sought to file an answer and crossclaim challenging the Bureau’s authority to allocate water from Upper Klamath Lake for the Boat Dance.
Court’s analysis
The court explained that federally recognized tribes generally possess sovereign immunity, meaning they ordinarily cannot be sued without an unequivocal waiver or congressional authorization. The Tribe waived that immunity by filing this lawsuit, but the court held that the waiver was limited to the particular dispute the Tribe placed before the court.
According to the court, the Tribe’s case presented the narrow question whether the Bureau acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it departed from the two operative plans and refused to release water for the Boat Dance. The Tribe’s complaint did not seek an adjudication of water rights and expressly preserved immunity from other claims.
The court found that KID’s proposed answer and crossclaim went substantially further. They challenged the Bureau’s water rights and authority under the Endangered Species Act, the Reclamation Act, and orders issued by the state of Oregon, and sought declarations concerning the parties’ rights. The court concluded that these issues amounted to an adjudication of water rights beyond the scope of the Tribe’s waiver of sovereign immunity.
The court also found that intervention would duplicate issues in a related case, No. 19-CV-04405-WHO, where KID had already been allowed to intervene. That earlier case more directly addressed whether Oregon law restricted the Bureau’s release of water from Upper Klamath Lake to meet obligations to other stakeholders.
Disposition
Judge William H. Orrick denied KID’s motion to intervene. Because sovereign immunity barred the proposed claims, the court did not address whether KID otherwise qualified for intervention as a matter of right or permissive intervention under Rule 24.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.