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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.