Flagstaff, Ariz.: A federal judge has sided with the Treasury Department in a case challenging the distribution of coronavirus relief aid to Native American governments.
Tribal governments had received $4.8 billion from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, based on federal housing population figures some said were badly skewed.
Three tribes in Oklahoma, Florida and Kansas sued over a methodology that related on population data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The tribes alleged that they were truncated by the millions because the tribal enrollment figures were higher than the figures depicted in the federal figures.
For example, the Shawnee tribe of Oklahoma had zero figures in the Confederate statistics.
The Treasury Department modified the methodology to correct the most significant disparities after a federal appeals court said the methodology was likely arbitrary and arbitrary, and sent additional payments to some tribes.
The Shawnee tribe was satisfied and dropped their legal challenge. The Mikosuki tribe of Indians in Florida and the prairie band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas argued that the new amounts made no sense when the one per capita figure was scrapped and continued their fight in court.
US District Court Judge Ahmet Mehta ruled Friday that the Treasury Department’s revised methodology was justified, even if some tribes end up worse off if the Treasury only used better data in 2020.
Congress gave the department authority over how to fund it.
Carol Heckman, an attorney for Prairie Band, said Friday that the tribe has not decided whether to appeal the decision. But he pointed to what he saw as multiple victories in the case.
Heckman said that the Prairie Band received an additional $864,000 from a legal search. The case influenced the way funds were distributed to tribes under the American Planning Rescue Act by not relying on outdated HUD data.
And, a federal appeals court ruled that Mehta had to consider the tribes’ claims on merits because initially the Treasury Department’s functioning was not subject to court review.
On balance, it has been a very successful trial despite this decision, Heckman said. I am really happy.
Mikosuki’s lawyers did not respond to email and phone requests for comment Friday. The trial resulted in an additional payment of approximately $825,000 to the tribe.
The Shawnee tribe received another $5.2 million.
It is not clear whether other tribes received additional payments last spring based on the revised methodology. The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
The agency said it would look at the difference between federal data and enrollment data provided by tribes and rank them, so the top 15% of tribes would receive more funding to correct the most disparities.
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