Big Horn County Electric Cooperative, Inc. v. Alden Big Man, et al.

Indian tribes inherently lack jurisdiction to regulate and then adjudicate claims against nonmembers. In Montana v. U.S., 450 U.S. 544 (1981), this Court identified two narrow exceptions. The first relates to regulation of nonmembers who enter private, voluntary, consensual, commercial relationships with the tribe or its members. The second relates to activity that imperils the tribe’s political integrity, economic security, health, or welfare. This Court has never upheld tribal-court, civil-adjudicatory jurisdiction over a nonmember defendant under the first Montana exception, and expressly left this question open in Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, 360 (2001). The question now presented is: Whether an Indian tribal court has subject-matter jurisdiction to adjudicate a tribally created claim as an “other means” of regulating a nonmember federally funded and federally regulated electric cooperative tasked with providing electrical service to all customers within its service territory, including tribal members on Indian reservations?