A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a bid by members of Montana’s Crow Nation that threatened to unwind a water compact more than a decade after its completion.
The case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit centered on a dispute over the Crow Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act of 2010, which provided the tribe with funds to develop and improve irrigation projects and gave it authority to develop hydropower facilities.
A three-member appeals panel said Tuesday said the judge had correctly dismissed the complaint after finding that not one of the lawsuit’s allegations identified a claim for which relief could be granted.
“Although the Settlement Act creates trust duties,” Judge Neomi Rao wrote for the panel, the challengers “failed to plausibly allege the government violated any specific duty.”
