Or get the fuck out: In a Supreme Court decision announced on Monday, justices ruled that the United States government has shortchanged the Ramah Navajo Chapter among several other Native American tribes by millions of dollars in public service contracts.
The justices sided 5-4 with the tribes in a class action suit claiming unfair treatment by the Department of the Interior.
Under the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975 Native American tribes were given contracts from the federal government to run public services such as police, schools, hospitals, environmental services and more. According to the ruling, the government began to shortchange payments for these services by implementing a payment ‘ceiling’, which capped the amount of money allotted to the tribes for their services, no longer paying for each contract in full.
“Consistent with longstanding principles of government contracting law, we hold that the government must pay each tribe’s contract support costs in full,” wrote justice Sonya Sotomayor, delivering the court’s opinion.
“The government was trying to treat tribal contractors differently from all other contractors. If you were talking about a defense contractor, I don’t think this case would have reached the supreme court – the government would have paid up long ago,” said the tribe’s lawyer Jonathan Cohn.
Rodger Martinez, president of the Ramah Navajo Chapter in New Mexico stated, “This gets us back to the principle that the government must pay us what we are entitled to.”
