Supreme
Court declines to hear tribal dispute with paper companies
The U.S. Supreme Court declined Tuesday to intervene in a dispute between two Maine Indian tribes and paper companies.
The Penobscot Nation and Passamaquoddy Tribe asked the court to reverse a state court ruling requiring them to turn over documents to the paper companies. The court, without comment, refused to take the case.
A state judge found tribal leaders to be in contempt of court for failing to turn over documents in a high-profile legal battle involving access to documents, water quality regulation and claims of tribal sovereignty.
Asserting that the dispute is at the heart of the tribes' claim to be autonomous, sovereign governments, their leaders had expressed willingness to go to jail rather than relinquish copies of the records.
The underlying dispute is rooted in a bid by the state to become the sole overseer of wastewater discharges into Maine water.
The tribes want the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to maintain its authority. The tribes contend that paper companies have too much influence with state officials.
Great Northern Paper Inc., Georgia Pacific Corp. and Champion International Corp. requested the documents last year. In refusing to hand them over, the tribal governors said the tribes are sovereign nations not subject to Maine's access law.
The tribes lost their appeals to the state supreme court as well as in the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court let stand the state supreme court decision last May.
In that ruling, the state supreme court held that the state's Freedom of Access Law applies when the tribes exercise authority as municipal governments. Minutes, agendas or notes regarding tribal council meetings are exempt from the order.
Justice Robert Crowley granted a stay in the contempt ruling pending the outcome of the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A lawyer for the tribes maintained that the stay was warranted to give the tribes a chance at having the nation's highest court weigh in on what the state supreme court has characterized as an "unsettled, murky and complex" relationship between Maine and the tribes following the 1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act.
Associated Press 11/13/01