Oneida People - Recent Litigation

Recent Litigation

In 1970 and 1974 the Oneida Indian Nation of New York, Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, and the Oneida Nation of the Thames filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York to reclaim land taken from them by New York after the Revolutionary War, as it had been done without approval of a treaty by the United States Congress, as required by the US constitution. In 1998, the United States intervened in the lawsuits on behalf of the plaintiffs so the claim could proceed against New York State. The state had asserted immunity from suit under the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The defendants moved for summary judgment based on the U. S. Supreme Court's decision in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation (2005), in which the Court ruled that tribes could not re-establish sovereignty over lands they purchased on the open market, although the land was previously part of their reservation and traditional territory. It said the city and local governments had the power to tax such lands, but not necessarily the power to collect taxes. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit applied the Sherrill precedent, and reversed a $36.9 million damages award for 204 years of back rent, in Cayuga Indian Nation v. New York (2005). Through these cases, the courts began to create new interpretations of law. On May 21, 2007, Judge Kahn dismissed the Oneida's possessory land claims and allowed the non-possessory claims to proceed.

More recent litigation has formalized the split between, and defined the separate interests of the tribes of the Oneida who stayed in New York, and the Oneida who removed to Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Oneida tribe has sued to reacquire lands in their ancestral homelands of New York (now part of Madison County) as part of the settlement of the aforementioned litigation.