Paiute-Shoshone Indians of Bishop Community of Bishop Colony v. City of Los Angeles

Plaintiff Paiute-Shoshone Indians of the Bishop Community of the Bishop Colony, California, an Indian tribe formally recognized by the United States, filed this action against Defendant City of Los An-geles for an order restoring Plaintiff to possession of land that the City took long ago in a deal with the United States. The district court dismissed the action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(7) because it ruled that, under Rule 19 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the United States was a required party that Plaintiff eould not join. The district court certified the appealability of its order under 28 U.S.C. § 1292 (b). Upon Plaintiffs timely request, we agreed to hear this interlocutory appeal, and we now affirm.

I. Background

For centuries, Plaintiffs members lived in the area now called the Owens Valley in Inyo County, California. After non-Indian settlers began to move into that area in the late Nineteenth Century, Congress moved to protect Plaintiff by acquiring land in the area and setting it aside for Plaintiffs benefit. By 1924, the United States had acquired and set aside five tracts of land totaling approximately 1,030 acres (the “Bishop…