Key Points

  • The D.C. Circuit held that Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland's 2022 decision to add 1929 Calaveras County census descendants to the groups eligible to organize the California Valley Miwok Tribe was reasonable and reasonably explained under the Administrative Procedure Act.
  • The court relied on prior rulings and the 2015 Washburn Decision, which had said far more than five people were eligible, after a 2019 genealogy finding reduced the eligible pool from 289 to about 11.
  • The court found that Washburn had already called inclusion of the 1929 census descendants potentially proper and that the group had a long record of residence on the Sheep Ranch Rancheria.
  • The plaintiffs' unreasonable-delay, statute-of-limitations and issue-preclusion arguments were not preserved.
  • The court stated that it decided only who may participate in organizing the tribe, not who has a legitimate claim to tribal membership, which is the tribe's prerogative.

A federal appeals court on Oct. 23 upheld the Interior Department's decision to widen the pool of people eligible to organize the California Valley Miwok Tribe, rejecting a challenge by a faction whose position would have left the tribe's founding to about 11 people.

Judge Walker, writing for a D.C. Circuit panel that also included Judges Pillard and Childs, affirmed summary judgment for the government. The court held that a 2022 decision by Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, which added descendants of Miwok Indians listed on a 1929 Calaveras County census to the groups eligible to organize the tribe, was reasonable and reasonably explained. The challengers had sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, which directs courts to set aside agency action that is arbitrary or capricious.

The ruling keeps the 1929 census descendants among those eligible to vote in a secretarial election, the Interior-run vote at which a tribe's adult members ratify a constitution. "The outcome of this case will determine the future of tribal governance for the California Valley Miwok Tribe," Judge Walker wrote. He added that California's Gambling Revenue Sharing Trust Fund "is currently holding over $27 million that may be disbursed to the Tribe."

The tribe is federally recognized but has never validly completed its initial organization under the Indian Reorganization Act, which lets a tribe adopt a constitution and bylaws that its adult members ratify at a special election called by the Interior secretary. "For more than two decades, competing factions have disputed who may speak for the Tribe and who must be allowed to participate in adopting its organizing documents," Judge Walker wrote. Some of those factions numbered as few as five people.

In 2015, Assistant Secretary Kevin Washburn defined three eligible groups: people listed on a 1915 Indian census and their descendants; descendants of Jeff Davis, a Miwok Indian who lived on the Sheep Ranch Rancheria, a roughly one-acre parcel Interior bought in 1916 for the Indians on that census; and the heirs of Mabel Dixie and their descendants. Washburn wrote that including the 1929 census descendants "may be proper," but he left that question to the eligible groups as an "internal tribal decision."

Interior authorized an election in December 2018, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs identified 289 eligible voters. Voters ratified a constitution 143 to 12 on April 15, 2019. Nearly all of them had qualified as Jeff Davis descendants by tracing their line through John Jeff, whom Interior had understood to be Davis's son. In May 2019, Interior's Office of Federal Acknowledgment concluded that John Jeff's father was a man known as "Indian Jeff," and the bureau invalidated the election the same day.

That finding cut the eligible pool to about 11 people, including the nine individual plaintiffs, who descend from people on the 1915 census. On May 31, 2022, Newland revised Washburn's decision to add the 1929 census descendants, reasoning that Washburn had proceeded from a factual mistake. The plaintiffs sued, and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the revision.

The appeals court rested its holding on three points. First, earlier court rulings had put the tribe's potential membership at about 250, and a 2013 district court decision rejected as "unreasonable" a Bureau of Indian Affairs conclusion that the tribe had only five members. Washburn himself, citing those rulings, had concluded that "there are far more than five people eligible to take part in the organization of the Tribe."

"Eleven is sometimes 'far more than five,'" Judge Walker wrote, pointing to an 11-year prison sentence, an 11-percent interest rate and driving 11 over the speed limit, "at least when you see lights flashing behind you." The opinion continued: "But when the constant comparator is 250, eleven is not 'far more than five.' It is instead quite a lot like five."

The court also said the plaintiffs' position was "hard to square with the position they and their faction took before." On appeal they argued that "a group of 10 people is not inconsistent with the intent of Washburn," yet their reply brief conceded that they had "advocated in prior court decisions, that a larger community existed." The district court had noted that plaintiff Michael Mendibles proposed a 2013 constitution extending membership to 1929 census descendants, and it called the plaintiffs' current stance an "unequivocal about-face."

"In all, they say Washburn got it right while asking us to exclude more than 96% of the people Washburn thought his decision included," Judge Walker wrote.

Second, the court said, Newland "did not choose that group out of thin air," because Washburn had already said that including the 1929 descendants "may be proper." Third, the history of the Sheep Ranch Rancheria supported Newland's choice. The opinion noted that members of the 1929 census group and their descendants had someone living on the parcel for more than 70 years, including Yakima Dixie, its sole resident from 1971 until his death in 2017.

Newland's explanation was also adequate, the panel held, because he "considered the relevant history, responded to a concrete record problem, selected a category already identified by Washburn as potentially proper, and explained why the revision was necessary."

The panel limited its ruling to who may take part in organizing the tribe. "We do not address who has a legitimate claim to membership in the Tribe," Judge Walker wrote, adding that under established law "it is the prerogative of the Tribe itself to set membership criteria for tribal membership."

The court held the plaintiffs' remaining arguments unpreserved. They had argued that Newland's decision, issued seven years after Washburn's, "unreasonably delayed" secretarial elections, that the statute of limitations for modifying Washburn's decision had run, and that the government was precluded from recognizing the Newland decision. The panel agreed with the district court that the plaintiffs had abandoned the delay claim, and it said they never raised the other two arguments there.

Elizabeth T. Walker argued for the appellants. Mary G. Sprague of the Justice Department argued for the government.

The case was argued Nov. 3, 2025. The D.C. Circuit's affirmance leaves Newland's 2022 decision in place as the framework for deciding who may take part in the tribe's initial organization.