Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Peabody Western Coal Co.

ORDER AND AMENDED OPINION

ORDER

Plaintiff-Appellant’s motion to amend the court’s opinion is GRANTED. The Opinion, filed on September 26, 2014, and reported at 768 F.3d 962 (9th Cir.2014), is amended as follows:

At Slip Op. 22, 768 F.3d at 974 , the sentence beginning with and ending with is deleted and replaced with:

An Amended Opinion is filed concurrently with this Order.

OPINION

Peabody Western Coal Co. (“Peabody”) mines coal at the Black Mesa Complex and Kayenta mines on the Hopi and Navajo reservations in northeastern Arizona under leases with the tribes. At issue in this appeal are two leases with the Navajo Nation (“the Nation”) that permit Peabody to mine coal on Navajo reservation land. Each lease requires Peabody to give preference in employment to “Navajo Indians.” Both leases received approval from the Department of the Interior (“Interior”) under the Indian Mineral Leasing Act of 1938, 25 IJ.S.C. §§ 396a, 396e (“IMLA”), Since at least as early as the 1940s, Interi- or-approved mineral leases, including the two at issue here, have routinely included tribal hiring preference provisions.

This…