A-1 Contractors etal v. William Strate

HANSEN, Circuit Judge.

In this case, we are asked to decide whether an American Indian Tribal Court has subject matter jurisdiction over a tort case which arose out of an automobile accident which occurred between two non-Indian parties on an Indian reservation. A divided panel of this court previously concluded that the Indian tribe retained the inherent sovereign power to allow the tribal court to exercise subject matter jurisdiction over the dispute. After granting the suggestion of A-l Contractors and Lyle Stoekert to rehear this case en banc, we vacated the panel opinion. We now hold that…