Catawba Indian Tribe v. South Carolina

I cannot accept the majority’s conclusion that the district court erred in granting defendants’ motion for summary judgment and in dismissing plaintiff’s action. In my view, the 1959 Catawba Indian Tribe Division of Assets Act, 25 U.S.C. § 931 et seq., unquestionably terminated the Tribe’s legal existence, ended any trust relationship between the Catawbas and the federal government, and made South Carolina law fully applicable to whatever claim plaintiff may have had to the Tribe’s ancestral land. I agree with the district court that plaintiff’s claim, if valid at all, is in any event barred…