Justices deny Penobscot appeal over namesake river
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined an appeal by the Penobscot Indian Nation in its fight with Maine over ownership and regulation of the tribe’s namesake river.
It was a bitter defeat for the tribe that sued a decade ago, claiming the Penobscot River is part of its reservation.
Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis said it was a disappointing outcome in a legal case that goes to the “core identity of the Penobscot Nation.”
“We see this as a modern day territorial removal by the state by trying to separate us from our ancestral ties to our namesake river,” Francis told The Associated Press.
A federal judge previously ruled that the reservation includes islands of the river’s main stem, but not the waters. There were appeals to a panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of appeals and then to the full appeals court.
On Monday, the nation’s top court without comment, declined to hear the tribe’s appeals over river regulation.
The ruling came as the Maine Legislature was considering several measures that relate to tribal sovereignty.
The tribe said the lawsuit was necessary to protect tribal authority over its ancestral river and ensure sustenance rights. But state regulators argued that a win by the tribe would create “a twotiered system” on the Penobscot that would be a detriment to the general public.
Other Monday rulings: h The Supreme Court is declining to wade into a lawsuit filed by four New York City public school employees over a policy that they be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Lower courts had previously allowed the policy to go into effect while litigation continued, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor had also rejected an emergency request that the policy be put on hold. The justices said Monday they wouldn’t get involved in the dispute.
h The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland to the 2017 tax law that capped federal tax deductions for state and local taxes.
The lawsuit had previously been dismissed by lower courts. It argued that the Republican-led tax law, signed by then-President Donald Trump, unfairly singled out high-tax states in which Democrats predominate.
The law caps a deduction for state and local taxes, known as SALT, at $10,000. The lawsuit claimed that lawmakers crafted the provision to target Democratic states, interfering with the states’ constitutionally granted taxing authority.
Legislation to raise the cap has passed the House of Representatives but not the Senate.
h The court declined to hear a St. Louis-based natural gas company’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that could close a pipeline that runs through parts of Illinois and Missouri.
Spire President Scott Smith pledged to continue fighting to keep the 65-mile pipeline up and running.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted approval for the pipeline in 2018 and it became fully operational in 2019. The Spire STL Pipeline connects with another pipeline in western Illinois and carries natural gas to the St. Louis region, where Spire serves around 650,000 customers.