Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak

We are asked once again to mark the boundaries of state sovereign immunity from suit in federal court. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that immunity did not extend to suits by Indian tribes, and Alaska seeks review of that determination.

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In 1980, Alaska enacted a revenue-sharing statute that provided annual payments of $25,000 to each “Native village government” located in a community without a state-chartered *778municipal corporation. Alaska Stat. Ann. § 29.89.050 (1984). The State’s attorney general believed the statute to be unconstitutional. In his view, Native village…