U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch on Monday appeared skeptical of the federal government's argument that it has no obligation to develop a plan to provide the Navajo Nation with an adequate water supply.
raised by the U.S. government and a coalition of Western states to a lower court’s decision that revived a long-running dispute brought by the Navajo Nation against the U.S.said there is an “irreversible and dramatically important trust duty” implied by 175 years’ worth of treaties and court decisions to ensure access to water from the Colorado River.
Frederick Liu, an attorney for the federal government, argued Monday the United States’ trust obligations were “limited,” and said there’s nothing stopping the Navajo Nation from attempting to establish water rights on its own.“You don’t think there’s a fiduciary agreement at all?” said Sotomayor, a liberal justice. “That’s quite an odd agreement the tribe entered into, isn't it?”
The Navajo Nation’s suit was filed in 2003. It aims to get the U.S. Interior Department to determine whether the Little Colorado River — a tributary that runs through the reservation that covers northeastern Arizona and parts of Utah and New Mexico — is sufficient “to fulfill the reservation’s purpose of establishing a permanent homeland for the Nation”.
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