Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe v. United States

I.

In 1987, three Native-American Sioux Tribes filed this suit contending Congress should not have allocated 25% of an Indian Claims Act judgment fund to nonmember lineal descendants of the aggrieved aboriginal tribe, which had dispersed in the 1860s. The plaintiff Tribes asserted eight claims for relief, including due process, unconstitutional taking, breach of contract, and breach of the 1968 Appropriations Act.

The district court dismissed the case on the ground that all of the claims were barred by the six-year statute of limitations ( 28 U.S.C. § 2401 ); we affirmed, with one exception. Sis seton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe v. United States, 895 F.2d 588, 591-92 (9th Cir.1990). Because the Secretary of the Interior did not compile the list of nonmember lineal descendants of the aboriginal tribe until 1987, the plaintiff Tribes did not know the *354 number of persons who would share in the 25% of the judgment allocated to nonmember lineal descendants, and plaintiffs’ due process claim based upon the disproportion between the number of nonmember lineal descendants and the share of the judgment allocated to this group did not accrue until 1987. We noted, however, that “only if the…