A defaulting borrower told the Supreme Court on April 24 that he should be able to sue an Indian tribe based in Wisconsin for allegedly aggressive collection efforts he claims drove him to attempt to take his own life.
In the case, Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin (court file 22-227), the tribe argues that because it enjoys tribal sovereignty it cannot be sued.
Indian tribes are sovereigns that existed before the U.S. Constitution was adopted. They enjoy the same common-law immunity from lawsuits that sovereign governments possess unless Congress clearly expresses its intention to abrogate, or repeal, that immunity. The U.S. Bankruptcy Code abrogates the sovereign immunity of “governmental units,” but does not specifically refer to Indian tribes in defining that term. Instead, the code provides a list of specific federal, state, local, and foreign entities, and then adds “or other foreign or domestic government” in a residual clause, according to the tribe’s petition….