Cobell v. Salazar

Cobell v. Kempthorne (previously Cobell v. Norton) is a class-action lawsuit brought by Native American ("Indian") representatives against the United States government, who Native Americans claim have incorrectly accounted for trust assets belonging to Native Americans. The case was filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia, and originally asserted claims for mismanagement of the trust assets -- claims which were subsequently disallowed by the Court.

The case is sometimes reported as the largest suit against the U.S. in history.

Cobell v. Kempthorne was brought to suit on June 10, 1996. The plaintiffs are Elouise Cobell and four other named plaintiffs, and the defendants are the United States Department of the Interior and the United States Department of the Treasury. Cobell is represented by the firm of Kilpatrick Stockton. The Department of the Interior was represented first by Bruce Babbitt, then Gale Norton, and currently Dirk Kempthorne (as of July 2006). According to Cobell, "the case has revealed mismanagement, ineptness, dishonesty, and delay of federal officials."

Due to a court order in the litigation, portions of Interior's website, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), have been shut down since December 2001^[1]. BIA and other Interior bureaus and offices remain disconnected from the Internet.

On July 11, 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, siding with the government, removed Judge Royce Lamberth from the case - finding that Lamberth had lost his objectivity. "We conclude, reluctantly, that this is one of those rare cases in which reassignment is necessary," the judges wrote.

Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee known for speaking his mind, repeatedly sided with the Indians in their class-action lawsuit. His opinions condemned the government and found Interior Secretaries Gale Norton and Bruce Babbitt in contempt of court for their handling of the case. The appellate court reversed Lamberth several times, including the contempt charge against Norton. After a particularly harsh opinion last year, in which Lamberth lambasted the Interior Department as racist, the government petitioned to remove Lamberth, saying he was too biased to continue with the case.

The Appeals Court concluded that some of Judge Lamberth's statements went too far, and "on several occasions the district court or its appointees exceeded the role of impartial arbiter." The Court wrote that Lamberth believed that racism at Interior continued and is "a dinosaur -- the morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the last pathetic outpost of the indifference and anglocentrism we thought we had left behind."

The Appeals Court ordered the case reassigned to another judge.

Notes

• ^ — Original BIA website from the Internet Archive
• ^ - Associated Press article on Lamberth's review from The Salt Lake Tribune
• ^ - Indianz.com article on Bush's complaint against Lamberth

External links

• BIA site
• Site of the DoJ documents on the case
• Findlaw page on the action
• Friends Committee on National Legislation