Howard Ex Rel. United States v. Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation

MEMORANDUM

Appellants Thomas Howard and Robert Weldy (“Relators”) appeal from the district court’s dismissal of their False Claims Act (“FCA”) complaint against the Shoshone Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation (the “Tribe”). We affirm.

The district court correctly concluded that the Tribe, like a state, is a sovereign that does not fall within the definition of a “person” under the FCA. Vermont Agency of Natural Res. v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U.S. 765, 778-87 , 120 S.Ct. 1858 , 146 L.Ed.2d 886 (2000) (applying the “longstanding interpretive presumption that ‘person’ does not include the sovereign,” to be “disregarded only upon some affirmative showing of statutory intent to the contrary”). As the district court explained, “the same historical evidence and features of the FCA’s statutory scheme that failed to rebut the presumption' for the states in Stevens, here similarly fail to rebut the presumption for sovereign Indian tribes.” Therefore, Relators have failed to state a claim under the FCA, and the action was properly dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

Nor did the district court abuse its discretion in denying Relators’ Rule 59…