Court rejects Ute Tribe bid for ownership of 1.5 million acres that remain part of Utah reservation

SALT LAKE CITY — A federal appeals court has rejected the Ute Indian Tribe's effort to gain ownership of roughly 1.5 million acres in eastern Utah, the latest ruling in a land fight rooted in the federal government's treatment of the Utes nearly 150 years ago.

But the decision does not mean the land is no longer part of the Ute reservation.

"It's an oversimplification," Michalyn Steele, the Marion G. Romney professor of law at Brigham Young University, told KSL. "This was really a technical decision about the nature of the ultimate title in the land."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously that the tribe does not have what courts call "compensable title" to the approximately 1.5 million acres of unallotted land within the Uncompahgre Reservation.

That distinction determines whether the land is eligible to be restored to tribal ownership under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

The appeals court sided with the federal government and the state of Utah, affirming a lower court ruling against the tribe.

Reservation land, but a fight over ownership

The case hinges on a distinction that can easily get lost in a headline: A tribe can have jurisdiction over reservation land without owning every acre within its boundaries.

The Uncompahgre Reservation still exists, and the Ute Indian Tribe retains jurisdiction there.

"The tribe still has the right to govern those lands within the reservation," Steele said.

But the federal government administers the approximately 1.5 million acres at issue.

In 2016, the tribe asked the Department of the Interior to restore those lands to tribal ownership under the Indian Reorganization Act. Interior rejected the request, finding the tribe lacked the type of property interest — compensable title — required to use that provision of federal law.

In this case, compensable title essentially means the tribe would be entitled to the proceeds if those lands were sold.

The tribe challenged Interior's decision in court, arguing rights tied to land the Utes gave up in Colorado more than a century ago carried over when the Uncompahgre were relocated to Utah.

The D.C. Circuit disagreed.

"Because the tribe lacks compensable title to lands within the Uncompahgre Reservation, those lands are ineligible for restoration under the IRA," the court concluded.

How 1.9 million acres became 1.5 million

The dispute stretches back to a dramatic period of Ute and American history.

Ute people historically lived across portions of what are now Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. An 1868 treaty left several Ute bands with a reservation of approximately 15.7 million acres entirely within Colorado.

That reservation soon shrank as valuable mineral deposits were discovered and non-Indigenous settlers increasingly entered the land.

Following the 1879 killing of federal Indian agent Nathan Meeker and other federal officials in Colorado, Congress took steps to remove the Utes from their reservation.

Under an agreement ratified by Congress in 1880, three Ute bands agreed to the sale of their Colorado reservation and the federal government agreed to provide individual allotments.

For the Uncompahgre Band, the agreement called for settlement on agricultural land in Colorado if enough suitable land could be found. If it could not, the agreement contemplated moving the Uncompahgre to suitable agricultural land in Utah.

Federal officials ultimately determined there was not enough suitable land in Colorado.

In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur issued an executive order setting aside approximately 1.9 million acres in Utah as the Uncompahgre Reservation.

What happened to that acreage helps explain today's dispute.

According to the appeals court, the federal government eventually allotted only about 12,500 acres of the reservation and sold approximately 400,000 acres of unallotted land.

That left roughly 1.5 million acres of unallotted reservation land that the federal government still administers — the land at the center of the current case.

The promise at the center of the argument

Under the 1880 law governing the Utes' former Colorado reservation, proceeds from certain land sales were to be used for the benefit of the Utes.

That gave the tribe what courts now call compensable title to those Colorado lands.

The central question in the current case was whether that right followed the Uncompahgre when they relocated to Utah.

"The tribe argued that compensable title transferred to the Utah lands," Steele said.

The tribe pointed to subsequent actions by Congress as evidence that the government treated the Uncompahgre as having property interests in the Utah reservation. Among them was an 1887 law authorizing a railroad through the reservation that required compensation to Indians for the right-of-way and certain damages.

The appeals court was not persuaded.

The judges concluded that the language of the 1880 law limited compensable title to lands the Utes actually ceded to the federal government at that time — land within their Colorado reservation.

"None of those lands were in Utah," the court wrote.

The court also pointed to another historical detail: Utes receiving allotted land outside the Colorado reservation were required to pay the federal government $1.25 an acre. The judges said it would make little sense to interpret Congress as simultaneously giving the tribe ownership of unallotted Utah land while requiring individual Utes to pay for land allotted to them there.

A broader fight over land and compensation

The restoration dispute is part of broader litigation between the tribe and the federal government that has included claims involving land, mineral, water and grazing rights and demands for compensation reaching as high as $1 billion.

Those broader claims should not be confused with what the D.C. Circuit decided in its July 31 ruling.

The question before the appeals court was narrower: whether the tribe has compensable title to the remaining 1.5 million acres, making it eligible for restoration to tribal ownership under the Indian Reorganization Act.

The court said no.

Utah intervened on the federal government's side in the case.

What the ruling does — and doesn't — change

The appeals court specifically rejected the idea that reservation status automatically means a tribe owns all land within its boundaries.

"Reservations are places where tribes rather than states may govern, but they are not necessarily places where tribes or their members own all the land," the court wrote.

That is why Steele cautioned against describing the decision simply as the Utes losing 1.5 million acres.

The court did not erase the Uncompahgre Reservation or the tribe's jurisdiction there. Instead, it determined that reservation status and underlying property title are different legal questions.

Steele also said the narrow legal ruling should not obscure the larger history behind the tribe's arguments.

"I think the United States and the state of Utah have a moral obligation to respect the treaties and the treaty promises that were made to tribes, the Utes and all the other tribes," Steele said.

She said the federal government has been "somewhat careless" in ensuring those promises were kept while Americans continue to benefit from agreements that transferred tribal lands.

Steele stressed that the appeals court was not deciding whether every historical promise to the Utes had been honored.

"The D.C. Circuit Court was not construing their treaty," she said. "It was construing a narrow statute that foreclosed what the tribes were asking for in this way."

What happens next?

The Ute Indian Tribe could still ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the ruling.

"The tribe could appeal to the United States Supreme Court," Steele said.

The Supreme Court chooses which appeals it hears and accepts only a small portion of the cases presented to it.

Whether the tribe will pursue that option was not immediately clear.

KSL reached out to representatives of the Ute Indian Tribe on Tuesday seeking the tribe's response to the ruling and information about its next steps, but has not received a response as of publication.

Related topics