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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
Nos. 11–246 and 11–247
_________________
MATCH-E-BE-NASH-SHE-WISH BAND OF
POTTAWATOMI INDIANS, PETITIONER
11–246
v.
DAVID PATCHAK et al.
KEN L. SALAZAR, SECRETARY OF THE
INTERIOR, et al., PETITIONERS
11–247
v.
DAVID PATCHAK et al.
on writs of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the district of columbia circuit
[June 18, 2012]
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the
Court.
A provision of the Indian Reorganization Act
(IRA), 25 U. S. C. §465, authorizes the Secretary of
the Interior (Secretary) to acquire property “for the purpose
of providing land for Indians.” Ch. 576, §5, 48Stat.
985. The Secretary here acquired land in trust for an Indian tribe
seeking to open a casino. Respondent David Patchak lives near that
land and challenges the Secretary’s decision in a suit
brought under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5
U. S. C. §701
et seq. Patchak claims
that the Secretary lacked authority under §465 to take title
to the land, and alleges economic, environmental, and aesthetic
harms from the casino’s operation.
We consider two questions arising from
Patchak’s action. The first is whether the United States has
sovereign immunity from the suit by virtue of the Quiet Title Act
(QTA), 86Stat. 1176. We think it does not. The second is whether
Patchak has prudential standing to challenge the Secretary’s
acquisition. We think he does. We therefore hold that
Patchak’s suit may proceed.
I
The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi
Indians (Band) is an Indian tribe residing in rural Michigan.
Although the Band has a long history, the Department of the
Interior (DOI) formally recognized it only in 1999. See 63 Fed.
Reg. 56936 (1998). Two years later, the Band petitioned the
Secretary to exercise her authority under §465 by taking into
trust a tract of land in Wayland Township, Michigan, known as the
Bradley Property. The Band’s application explained that the
Band would use the property “for gaming purposes,” with
the goal of generating the “revenue necessary to promote
tribal economic development, self-sufficiency and a strong tribal
government capable of providing its members with sorely needed
social and educational programs.” App. 52, 41.[
1]
In 2005, after a lengthy administrative review,
the Secretary announced her decision to acquire the Bradley
Property in trust for the Band. See 70 Fed. Reg. 25596. In
accordance with applicable regulations, the Secretary committed to
wait 30 days before taking action, so that interested parties could
seek judicial review. See
ibid.; 25 CFR §151.12(b)
(2011). Within that window, an organization called Michigan
Gambling Opposition (or MichGO) filed suit alleging that the
Secretary’s decision violated environmental and gaming
statutes. The Secretary held off taking title to the property while
that litigation proceeded. Within the next few years, a District
Court and the D. C. Circuit rejected MichGO’s claims.
See
Michigan Gambling Opposition v.
Kempthorne, 525
F.3d 23, 27–28 (CADC 2008);
Michigan Gambling
Opposition v.
Norton, 477 F. Supp. 2d 1 (DC 2007).
Shortly after the D. C. Circuit ruled
against MichGO (but still before the Secretary took title), Patchak
filed this suit under the APA advancing a different legal theory.
He asserted that §465 did not authorize the Secretary to
acquire property for the Band because it was not a feder- ally
recognized tribe when the IRA was enacted in 1934. See App. 37. To
establish his standing to bring suit, Patchak contended that he
lived “in close proximity to” the Bradley Property and
that a casino there would “destroy the lifestyle he has
enjoyed” by causing “increased traffic,”
“increased crime,” “decreased property
values,” “an irreversible change in the rural character
of the area,” and “other aesthetic, socioeconomic, and
environmental problems.”
Id., at 30–31. Notably,
Patchak did not assert any claim of his own to the Bradley
Property. He requested only a declaration that the decision to
acquire the land violated the IRA and an injunction to stop the
Secretary from accepting title. See
id., at 38–39. The
Band intervened in the suit to defend the Secretary’s
decision.
In January 2009, about five months after Patchak
filed suit, this Court denied certiorari in MichGO’s case,
555 U.S. 1137, and the Secretary took the Bradley Property into
trust. That action mooted Patchak’s request for an injunction
to prevent the acquisition, and all parties agree that the suit now
effectively seeks to divest the Federal Government of title to the
land. See Brief for Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi
Indians 17 (hereinafter Tribal Petitioner); Brief for Federal
Petitioners 11; Brief for Respondent 24–25. The month after
the Government took title, this Court held in
Carcieri v.
Salazar,
555 U.S.
379, 382 (2009), that §465 authorizes the Secretary to
take land into trust only for tribes that were “under federal
jurisdiction” in 1934.[
2]
The District Court dismissed the suit without
considering the merits (including the relevance of
Carcieri), ruling that Patchak lacked prudential standing to
challenge the Secretary’s acquisition of the Bradley
Property. The court reasoned that the injuries Patchak alleged fell
outside §465’s “zone of interests.” 646 F.
Supp. 2d 72, 76 (DC 2009). The D. C. Circuit reversed that
determination. See 632 F.3d 702, 704–707 (2011). The court
also rejected the Secretary’s and the Band’s
alternative argument that by virtue of the QTA, sovereign immunity
barred the suit. See
id., at 707–712. The latter
ruling conflicted with decisions of three Circuits holding that the
United States has immunity from suits like Patchak’s. See
Neighbors for Rational Development, Inc. v.
Norton,
379 F.3d 956, 961–962 (CA10 2004);
Metropolitan Water
Dist. of Southern Cal. v.
United States, 830 F.2d
139, 143–144 (CA9 1987)
(per curiam);
Florida
Dept. of Bus. Regulation v.
Department of Interior, 768
F.2d 1248, 1253–1255 (CA11 1985). We granted certiorari to
review both of the D. C. Circuit’s holdings, 565
U. S. ___ (2011), and we now affirm.
II
We begin by considering whether the United
States’ sovereign immunity bars Patchak’s suit under
the APA. That requires us first to look to the APA itself and then,
for reasons we will describe, to the QTA. We conclude that the
United States has waived its sovereign immunity from
Patchak’s action.
The APA generally waives the Federal
Government’s immunity from a suit “seeking relief other
than money damages and stating a claim that an agency or an officer
or employee thereof acted or failed to act in an official capacity
or under color of legal authority.” 5 U. S. C.
§702. That waiver would appear to cover Patchak’s suit,
which objects to official action of the Secretary and seeks only
non-monetary relief. But the APA’s waiver of immunity comes
with an important carve-out: The waiver does not apply “if
any other statute that grants consent to suit expressly or
impliedly forbids the relief which is sought” by the
plaintiff.
Ibid. That provision prevents plaintiffs from
exploiting the APA’s waiver to evade limitations on suit
contained in other statutes. The question thus becomes whether
another statute bars Patchak’s demand for relief.
The Government and Band contend that the QTA
does so. The QTA authorizes (and so waives the Government’s
sovereign immunity from) a particular type of action, known as a
quiet title suit: a suit by a plaintiff asserting a “right,
title, or interest” in real property that conflicts with a
“right, title, or interest” the United States claims.
28 U. S. C. §2409a(d). The statute, however,
contains an exception: The QTA’s authorization of suit
“does not apply to trust or restricted Indian lands.”
§2409a(a). According to the Government and Band, that
limitation on quiet title suits satisfies the APA’s carve-out
and so forbids Patchak’s suit. In the Band’s words, the
QTA exception retains “the United States’ full immunity
from suits seeking to challenge its title to or impair its legal
interest in Indian trust lands.” Brief for Tribal Petitioner
18.
Two hypothetical examples might help to frame
consideration of this argument. First, suppose Patchak had sued
under the APA claiming that
he owned the Bradley Property
and that the Secretary therefore could not take it into trust. The
QTA would bar that suit, for reasons just suggested. True, it fits
within the APA’s general waiver, but the QTA specifically
authorizes quiet title actions (which this hypothetical suit is)
except when they involve Indian lands (which this
hypothetical suit does). In such a circumstance, a plaintiff cannot
use the APA to end-run the QTA’s limitations. “[W]hen
Congress has dealt in par- ticularity with a claim and [has]
intended a specified remedy”—including its
exceptions—to be exclusive, that is the end of the matter;
the APA does not undo the judgment.
Block v.
North Dakota
ex rel. Board of Univ. and School Lands,
461
U.S. 273, 286, n. 22 (1983) (quoting H. R. Rep. No.
94–1656, p. 13 (1976)).
But now suppose that Patchak had sued under the
APA claiming only that use of the Bradley Property was causing
environmental harm, and raising no objection at all to the
Secretary’s title. The QTA could not bar that suit because
even though involving Indian lands, it asserts a grievance
altogether different from the kind the statute concerns. Justice
Scalia, in a former life as Assistant Attorney General, made this
precise point in a letter to Congress about the APA’s waiver
of immunity (which we hasten to add, given the author, we use not
as legislative history, but only for its persuasive force). When a
statute “is not addressed to the type of grievance which the
plaintiff seeks to assert,” then the statute cannot prevent
an APA suit.
Id., at 28 (May 10, 1976, letter of Assistant
Atty. Gen. A. Scalia).[
3]
We think that principle controls Patchak’s
case: The QTA’s “Indian lands” clause does not
render the Government immune because the QTA addresses a kind of
grievance different from the one Patchak advances. As we will
explain, the QTA—whose full name, recall, is the Quiet Title
Act—concerns (no great surprise) quiet title actions. And
Patchak’s suit is
not a quiet title action, because
although it contests the Secretary’s title, it does not claim
any competing interest in the Bradley Property. That fact makes the
QTA’s “Indian lands” limitation simply inapposite
to this litigation.
In reaching this conclusion, we need look no
further than the QTA’s text. From its title to its
jurisdictional grant to its venue provision, the Act speaks
specifically and repeatedly of “quiet title” actions.
See 86Stat. 1176 (“An Act [t]o permit suits to adjudicate
certain real property quiet title actions”); 28
U. S. C. §1346(f) (giving district courts
jurisdiction over “civil actions . . . to quiet
title” to property in which the United States claims an
interest); §1402(d) (setting forth venue for “[a]ny
civil action . . . to quiet title” to property in
which the United States claims an interest). That term is
universally understood to refer to suits in which a plaintiff not
only challenges someone else’s claim, but also asserts his
own right to disputed property. See,
e.g., Black’s Law
Dictionary 34 (9th ed. 2009) (defining an “
action to quiet
title” as “[a] proceeding to establish a
plaintiff’s title to land by compelling the adverse claimant
to establish a claim or be forever estopped from asserting
it”);
Grable & Sons Metal Products, Inc. v.
Darue Engineering & Mfg.,
545 U.S.
308, 315 (2005) (“[T]he facts showing the
plaintiffs’ title . . . are essential parts of the
plaintiffs’ [quiet title] cause of action” (quoting
Hopkins v.
Walker,
244 U.S.
486, 490 (1917))).
And the QTA’s other provisions make clear
that the recurrent statutory term “quiet title action”
carries its or- dinary meaning. The QTA directs that the complaint
in such an action “shall set forth with particularity the
nature of the right, title, or interest which the plaintiff claims
in the real property.” 28 U. S. C. §2409a(d).
If the plaintiff does not assert any such right (as Patchak does
not), the statute cannot come into play.[
4] Further, the QTA provides an option for the United
States, if it loses the suit, to pay “just
compensation,” rather than return the property, to the
“person determined to be entitled” to it.
§2409a(b). That provision makes perfect sense in a quiet title
action: If the plaintiff is found to own the property, the
Government can satisfy his claim through an award of money (while
still retaining the land for its operations). But the provision
makes no sense in a suit like this one, where Patchak does not
assert a right to the property. If the United States loses the
suit, an award of just compensation to the rightful owner (whoever
and wherever he might be) could do nothing to satisfy
Patchak’s claim.[
5]
In two prior cases, we likewise described the
QTA as addressing suits in which the plaintiff asserts an ownership
interest in Government-held property. In
Block v.
North
Dakota ex rel. Board of Univ. and School Lands,
461 U.S.
273 (1982), we considered North Dakota’s claim to land
that the United States viewed as its own. We held that the State
could not circumvent the QTA’s statute of limitations by
invoking other causes of action, among them the APA. See
id., at 277–278, 286, n. 22. The crux of our reasoning
was that Congress had enacted the QTA to address exactly the kind
of suit North Dakota had brought. Prior to the QTA, we explained,
“citizens asserting title to or the right to possession of
lands claimed by the United States” had no recourse; by
passing the statute, “Congress sought to rectify this state
of affairs.”
Id., at 282. Our decision reflected that
legislative purpose: Congress, we held, “intended the QTA to
provide the exclusive means by which adverse claimants could
challenge the United States’ title to real property.”
Id., at 286. We repeat: “adverse claimants,”
meaning plaintiffs who themselves assert a claim to property
antagonistic to the Federal Government’s.
Our decision in
United States v.
Mottaz,
476 U.S.
834 (1986), is of a piece. There, we considered whether the
QTA, or instead the Tucker Act or General Allotment Act, governed
the plaintiff’s suit respecting certain allotments of land
held by the United States. We thought the QTA the relevant statute
because the plaintiff herself asserted title to the property. Our
opinion quoted the plaintiff’s own description of her suit:
“At no time in this proceeding did [the plaintiff] drop her
claim for title. To the contrary, the claim for title is the
essence and bottom line of [the plaintiff’s] case.”
Id., at 842 (quoting Brief for Respondent in
Mottaz,
O. T. 1985, No. 546, p. 3). That fact, we held, brought the
suit “within the [QTA’s] scope”: “What [the
plaintiff] seeks is a declaration that she alone possesses valid
title.” 476 U. S., at 842. So once again, we construed
the QTA as addressing suits by adverse claimants.
But Patchak is not an adverse claimant—and
so the QTA (more specifically, its reservation of sovereign
immunity from actions respecting Indian trust lands) cannot bar his
suit. Patchak does not contend that he owns the Bradley Property,
nor does he seek any relief corresponding to such a claim. He wants
a court to strip the United States of title to the land, but not on
the ground that it is his and not so that he can possess it.
Patchak’s lawsuit therefore lacks a defining feature of a QTA
action. He is not trying to disguise a QTA suit as an APA action to
circumvent the QTA’s “Indian lands” exception.
Rather, he is not bringing a QTA suit at all. He asserts merely
that the Secretary’s decision to take land into trust
violates a federal statute—a garden-variety APA claim. See 5
U. S. C. §§706(2)(A), (C) (“The reviewing
court shall . . . hold unlawful and set aside agency
action . . . not in accordance with law [or] in excess of
statutory jurisdiction [or] authority”). Because that is
true—because in then-Assistant Attorney General
Scalia’s words, the QTA is “not addressed to the type
of grievance which [Patchak] seeks to assert,” H. R.
Rep. 94–1656, at 28—the QTA’s limitation of
remedies has no bearing. The APA’s general waiver of
sovereign immunity instead applies.
The Band and Government, along with the dissent,
object to this conclusion on three basic grounds. First, they
contend that the QTA speaks more broadly than we have indicated,
waiving immunity from suits “to adjudicate a disputed title
to real property in which the United States claims an
interest.” 28 U. S. C. §2409a(a). That
language, the argument goes, encompasses all actions contesting the
Government’s legal interest in land, regardless whether the
plaintiff claims ownership himself. See Brief for Federal
Petitioners 19–20; Reply Brief for Tribal Petitioner
4–6;
post, at 8–9 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).
The QTA (not the APA) thus becomes the relevant statute after
all—as to both its waiver and its “corresponding”
reservation of immunity from suits involving Indian lands. Reply
Brief for Tribal Petitioner 6.
But the Band and Government can reach that
result only by neglecting key words in the relevant provision. That
sentence, more fully quoted, reads: “The United States may be
named as a party defendant in
a civil action under this
section to adjudicate a disputed title to real property in
which the United States claims an interest.” §2409a(a)
(emphasis added). And as we have already noted, “this
section”—§2409a—includes a host of
indications that the “civil action” at issue is an
ordinary quiet title suit: Just recall the section’s title
(“Real property quiet title actions”), and its pleading
requirements (the plaintiff “shall set forth with
particularity the nature of the right, title, or interest which
[he] claims”), and its permission to the Government to remedy
an infraction by paying “just compensation.” Read with
reference to all these provisions (as well as to the QTA’s
contemporane ously enacted jurisdictional and venue sections), the
waiver clause rebuts, rather than supports, the Band’s and
the Government’s argument: That clause speaks not to any suit
in which a plaintiff challenges the Government’s title, but
only to an action in which the plaintiff also claims an interest in
the property.
The Band and Government next invoke cases
holding that “when a statute provides a detailed mechanism
for judicial consideration of particular issues at the behest of
particular persons,” the statute may “impliedly
preclude[ ]” judicial review “of those issues at
the behest of other persons.”
Block v.
Community
Nutrition Institute,
467 U.S.
340, 349 (1984); see
United States v.
Fausto,
484 U.S.
439, 455 (1988). Here, the Band and Government contend, the
QTA’s specific authorization of adverse claimants’
suits creates a negative implication:
non-adverse claimants
like Patchak cannot challenge Government ownership of land under
any other statute. See Reply Brief for Tribal Petitoner 7–10;
Reply Brief for Federal Petitioners 7–9; see also
post, at 3–4. The QTA, says the Band, thus
“preempts [Patchak’s] more general remedies.”
Brief for Tribal Petitioner 23 (internal quotation marks
omitted).
But we think that argument faulty, and the cited
cases inapposite, for the reason already given: Patchak is bringing
a different claim, seeking different relief, from the kind the QTA
addresses. See
supra, at 7–10. To see the point,
consider a contrasting example. Suppose the QTA authorized suit
only by adverse claimants who could assert a property interest of
at least a decade’s duration. Then suppose an adverse
claimant failing to meet that requirement (because, say, his claim
to title went back only five years) brought suit under a general
statute like the APA. We would surely bar that suit, citing the
cases the Government and Band rely on; in our imaginary statute,
Congress delineated the class of persons who could bring a quiet
title suit, and that judgment would preclude others from doing so.
But here, once again, Patchak is not bringing a quiet title action
at all. He is not claiming to own the property, and he is not
demanding that the court transfer the property to him. So to
succeed in their argument, the Government and Band must go much
further than the cited cases: They must say that in authorizing one
person to bring one kind of suit seeking one form of relief,
Congress barred another person from bringing another kind of suit
seeking another form of relief. Presumably, that contention would
extend only to suits involving similar subject
matter—
i.e., the Government’s ownership of
property. But that commonality is not itself sufficient. We have
never held, and see no cause to hold here, that some general
similarity of subject matter can alone trigger a remedial
statute’s preclusive effect.
Last, the Band and Government argue that we
should treat Patchak’s suit as we would an adverse
claimant’s because they equally implicate the “Indian
lands” exception’s policies. According to the
Government, allowing challenges to the Secretary’s trust
acquisitions would “pose significant barriers to
tribes[’] . . . ability to promote investment and
economic development on the lands.” Brief for Federal
Petitioners 24. That harm is the same whether or not a plaintiff
claims to own the land himself. Indeed, the Band argues that the
sole difference in this suit cuts in its direction, because
non-adverse claimants like Patchak have “the most remote
injuries and indirect interests in the land.” Brief for
Tribal Petitioner 13; see Reply Brief for Federal Petitioners
11–12; see also
post, at 2, 7, 10.[
6]
That argument is not without force, but it must
be addressed to Congress. In the QTA, Congress made a judgment
about how far to allow quiet title suits—to a point, but no
further. (The “no further” includes not only the
“Indian lands” exception, but one for security
interests and water rights, as well as a statute of limitations, a
bar on jury trials, jurisdictional and venue constraints, and the
just compensation option discussed earlier.) Perhaps Congress
would—perhaps Congress should—make the identical
judgment for the full range of lawsuits pertaining to the
Government’s ownership of land. But that is not our call. The
Band assumes that plaintiffs like Patchak have a lesser interest
than those bringing quiet title actions, and so should be precluded
a fortiori. But all we can say is that Patchak has a
different interest. Whether it is lesser, as the Band argues,
because not based on property rights; whether it is greater because
implicating public interests; or whether it is in the end exactly
the same—that is for Congress to tell us, not for us to tell
Congress. As the matter stands, Congress has not assimilated to
quiet title actions all other suits challenging the
Government’s ownership of property. And so when a plaintiff
like Patchak brings a suit like this one, it falls within the
APA’s general waiver of sovereign immunity.
III
We finally consider the Band’s and the
Government’s alternative argument that Patchak cannot bring
this ac- tion because he lacks prudential standing. This Court has
long held that a person suing under the APA must satisfy not only
Article III’s standing requirements, but an additional test:
The interest he asserts must be “arguably within the zone of
interests to be protected or regulated by the statute” that
he says was violated.
Association of Data Processing Service
Organizations, Inc. v.
Camp,
397
U.S. 150, 153 (1970). Here, Patchak asserts that in taking
title to the Bradley Property, the Secretary exceeded her authority
under §465, which authorizes the acquisition of property
“for the purpose of providing land for Indians.” And he
alleges that this statutory violation will cause him economic,
environmental, and aesthetic harm as a nearby property owner. See
supra, at 3. The Government and Band argue that the
relationship between §465 and Patchak’s asserted
interests is insufficient. That is so, they contend, because the
statute focuses on land
acquisition, whereas Patchak’s
interests relate to the land’s
use as a casino. See
Brief for Tribal Petitioner 46 (“The Secretary’s
decision to put land into trust does not turn on any particular use
of the land, gaming or otherwise[,] . . . [and] thus has no impact
on [Patchak] or his asserted interests”); Brief for Federal
Petitioners 34 (“[L]and may be taken into trust for a host of
purposes that have noth- ing at all to do with gaming”). We
find this argument unpersuasive.
The prudential standing test Patchak must meet
“is not meant to be especially demanding.”
Clarke v.
Securities Industry Assn.,
479 U.S.
388, 399 (1987). We apply the test in keeping with
Congress’s “evident intent” when enacting the APA
“to make agency action presumptively reviewable.”
Ibid. We do not require any “indication of
congressional purpose to benefit the would-be plaintiff.”
Id., at 399–400.[
7] And we have always conspicuously included the word
“arguably” in the test to indicate that the benefit of
any doubt goes to the plaintiff. The test forecloses suit only when
a plaintiff’s “interests are so marginally related to
or inconsistent with the purposes implicit in the statute that it
cannot reasonably be assumed that Congress intended to permit the
suit.”
Id., at 399
.
Patchak’s suit satisfies that standard,
because §465 has far more to do with land use than the
Government and Band acknowledge. Start with what we and others have
said about §465’s context and purpose. As the leading
treatise on federal Indian law notes, §465 is “the
capstone” of the IRA’s land provisions. F. Cohen,
Handbook of Federal Indian Law §15.07[1][a], p. 1010 (2005
ed.) (hereinafter Cohen). And those provisions play a key role in
the IRA’s overall effort “to rehabilitate the
Indian’s economic life,”
Mescalero Apache Tribe
v.
Jones,
411 U.S.
145, 152 (1973) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Land
forms the basis” of that “economic life,”
providing the foundation for “tourism, manufacturing, mining,
logging, . . . and gaming.” Cohen §15.01,
at 965. Section 465 thus functions as a primary mechanism to foster
Indian tribes’ economic development. As the D. C.
Circuit explained in the
MichGO litigation, the section
“provid[es] lands sufficient to enable Indians to achieve
self-support.”
Michigan Gambling, 525 F. 3d, at
31 (internal quotation marks omitted); see
Morton v.
Mancari,
417 U.S.
535, 542 (1974) (noting the IRA’s economic aspect). So
when the Secretary obtains land for Indians under §465, she
does not do so in a vacuum. Rather, she takes title to properties
with at least one eye directed toward how tribes will use those
lands to support economic development.
The Department’s regulations make this
statutory concern with land use crystal clear. Those regulations
permit the Secretary to acquire land in trust under §465 if
the “land is necessary to facilitate tribal
self-determination, economic development, or Indian housing.”
25 CFR §151.3(a)(3). And they require the Secretary to
consider, in evaluating any acquisition, both “[t]he purposes
for which the land will be used” and the “poten- tial
conflicts of land use which may arise.”
§§151.10(c), 151.10(f); see §151.11(a). For
“off-reservation acquisitions” made “for business
purposes”—like the Bradley Property—the
regulations further provide that the tribe must “provide a
plan which specifies the anticipated economic benefits associated
with the proposed use.” §151.11(c). DOI’s
regulations thus show that the statute’s implementation
centrally depends on the projected use of a given property.
The Secretary’s acquisition of the Bradley
Property is a case in point. The Band’s application to the
Secretary highlighted its plan to use the land for gaming purposes.
See App. 41 (“[T]rust status for this Property is requested
in order for the Tribe to acquire property on which it plans to
conduct gaming”);
id., at 61–62 (“The
Tribe intends to . . . renovate the existing
. . . building into a gaming fa- cility
. . . . to offer Class II and/or Class III
gaming”). Simi- larly, DOI’s notice of intent to take
the land into trust announced that the land would “be used
for the purpose of construction and operation of a gaming
facility,” which the Department had already determined would
meet the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act’s requirements. 70 Fed.
Reg. 25596; 25 U. S. C. §§2701–2721. So
from start to finish, the decision whether to acquire the Bradley
Prop- erty under §465 involved questions of land use.
And because §465’s implementation
encompasses these issues, the interests Patchak raises—at
least arguably— fall “within the zone . . .
protected or regulated by the statute.” If the Government had
violated a statute specifically addressing how federal land can be
used, no one would doubt that a neighboring landowner would have
prudential standing to bring suit to enforce the statute’s
limits. The difference here, as the Government and Band point out,
is that §465 specifically addresses only land ac- quisition.
But for the reasons already given, decisions under the statute are
closely enough and often enough entwined with considerations of
land use to make that difference immaterial. As in this very case,
the Secretary will typically acquire land with its eventual use in
mind, after assessing potential conflicts that use might create.
See 25 CFR §§151.10(c), 151.10(f), 151.11(a). And so
neighbors to the use (like Patchak) are reasonable—indeed,
predictable—challengers of the Secretary’s decisions:
Their interests, whether economic, environmental, or aesthetic,
come within §465’s regulatory ambit.
* * *
The QTA’s reservation of sovereign
immunity does not bar Patchak’s suit. Neither does the
doctrine of prudential standing. We therefore affirm the judgment
of the D. C. Circuit, and remand the case for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.