Sen. Barrasso Introduces Carcieri Compromise Bill

More than six years after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Carcieri v. Salazar, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, has introduced the "Interior Improvement Act" to fix the loophole created by the decision that denied some tribes rights under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA). The bill is not, however, the "clean" Carcieri fix that Indian Country had been seeking.

In 2009, the Carcieri court ruled that the IRA, which delegated authority to the Secretary of the Interior to place land in trust status for Indian tribes, applied only to tribes "under Federal jurisdiction" on the date of the IRA's enactment. Under the IRA, land is to be placed into trust status only for "the purpose of providing land for Indians." The act defined "Indian" to mean "all persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized Indian tribe now under Federal jurisdiction." The court held that any tribe not "under Federal