The United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling this month concerning the latest appeal by banished members of the Ute Indian Tribe. According to a press release from the Ute Tribe, four banished members turned to the Appeals Court after the District Court held in 2019 that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. The release explains that “the banished members, Angelita Chegup, Tara Amboh, Mary Carol Jenkins, and Lynda Kozlowicz, filed a case in the United States District Court for the District of Utah in 2019 following their five-year banishment by the Tribe the previous year. The suit named the Tribe, its Business Committee, and the individual members of the Business Committee as defendants. The banished members claimed their temporary banishment amounted to unlawful detention and that they were therefore entitled to habeas corpus relief under the Indian Civil Rights Act.” The case was dismissed and the banished members then appealed the dismissal to the Tenth Circuit Court where the majority of the panel ruled that the district court should have started its analysis at whether the banished were excused from exhausting tribal remedies. It was undisputed that the banished members had not filed an action in Tribal Court. As a result the case is returning to Utah federal district court to consider the tribal exhaustion question. Ute Tribe Business Committee Chairman Shaun Chapoose states that the Tribe believes the Tenth Circuit’s decision properly recognizes the Tribe’s sovereign immunity and supports the Tribe’s position that challenges to temporary banishment should be pursued in Tribal Court.
