Dissent

The case ended up ruling 6-3 in the tribes favor, the 3 remaining judges stated that there was no enumerated relationship of trust laid out between the tribe and the United States government. They went on to say that since there was no relationship nothing was ever breached therefore the tribe had no ground to sue. It puzzles me that even though there were several other cases that set precedent for something similar to this case they never mentioned anything about them, they also never acknowledged the fact that the reasoning behind the creation of the Indian Mineral Lease Act of 1982 was to give the federal government the power to approve a tribe’s request to lease out their land in exchange that the government would look after all procedures and make sure the land was looked after. It’s obvious that there’s a trust relationship established but yet the justices still never mentioned this fact. "The United States breached its fiduciary obligations to the Navajo Nation in connection with these coal leases with Peabody." http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=Fed&navby=case&no=005086&exact=1