Makah Indian Tribe v. Verity
910 F.2d 555 (1990)
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Rule of Law:
When a plaintiff's claims can be severed, absent parties who are indispensable to a substantive claim for reallocation of a limited resource are not indispensable to a separate procedural claim challenging the legality of the government's rulemaking process for that allocation.
Facts:
- The Makah Indian Tribe holds a treaty right to fish in their historic fishing grounds in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington.
- Numerous other Indian tribes also hold treaty rights to fish for the same stocks of migrating Columbia River salmon.
- The Secretary of Commerce, advised by the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), promulgates regulations that set annual ocean harvest quotas for salmon.
- For the 1987 season, the PFMC developed ocean quotas consistent with a Columbia River Fish Management Plan, which had been negotiated by other parties and assigned most of the allowable catch of a weak salmon run to river fishermen.
- The Makah and three other ocean treaty tribes proposed higher ocean quotas, but the PFMC rejected their proposal.
- The Secretary of Commerce adopted the PFMC's recommendation and issued final regulations setting the 1987 ocean fishing allotments.
Procedural Posture:
- The Makah Indian Tribe filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, as the court of first instance, against the Secretary of Commerce.
- The complaint challenged both the substance of the 1987 salmon quotas and the federal administrative process used to establish them.
- The district court dismissed the entire action for failure to join indispensable parties, finding that 23 other treaty tribes with fishing rights were necessary but could not be joined due to sovereign immunity.
- The Makah Indian Tribe (appellant) appealed the district court's dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
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Issue:
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19, must a lawsuit challenging federal regulations be dismissed in its entirety when absent parties, who are immune from suit, are indispensable to the plaintiff's substantive claims but not to its procedural claims?
Opinions:
Majority - Beezer, J.
No. A court should not dismiss an entire lawsuit when absent parties are indispensable only to certain claims; rather, the claims should be severed, and the court should dismiss only those that cannot be adjudicated without the absent parties. The court analyzed the Makah's claims separately. For the substantive claim seeking a reallocation of the 1987 fish harvest, the absent tribes are necessary parties under Rule 19(a) because the harvest is a limited resource, and granting relief to the Makah would impair the interests of the other tribes. Because these tribes have sovereign immunity and cannot be joined, and because no relief can be shaped to avoid prejudice, they are indispensable under Rule 19(b), and this claim must be dismissed. However, for the procedural claims challenging the Secretary's compliance with the Fishery Conservation and Management Act (FCMA) and Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the absent tribes are not necessary parties. Complete prospective relief—an order requiring the Secretary to follow lawful procedures in the future—can be accorded without the other tribes, and the absent tribes are not prejudiced because all tribes have an equal interest in a lawful administrative process.
Analysis:
This decision establishes a critical precedent for litigation involving shared natural resources among multiple sovereign entities, such as Indian tribes. It demonstrates that plaintiffs can avoid complete dismissal under FRCP 19 by severing procedural challenges from substantive claims for resource reallocation. The ruling reinforces the public rights exception to joinder, allowing suits that enforce lawful government procedure to proceed even if they indirectly affect absent parties. This bifurcated approach allows courts to address governmental misconduct while respecting the sovereign immunity of non-party tribes, providing a viable, albeit limited, path for plaintiffs who might otherwise have no forum for their claims.
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