Applicability of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) (29 USC §§ 151–169) to the respondent-Little River Band of Ottawa Indians’ (the Band) operation of a casino resort; Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (25 USC §§ 2701–2721); 29 USC §§ 157 & 158(a)(1); The National Labor Relations Board’s (the NLRB or the Board) jurisdiction; San Manuel Indian Bingo & Casino (NLRB); Federal Power Comm’n v. Tuscarora Indian Nation; NLRB v. Noel Canning; The Band’s “sovereignty” & the NLRA; U.S. Const. amend. X; Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe; United States v. Wheeler; United States v. Kagama; Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land & Cattle Co.; Nevada v. Hicks; Montana v. United States; Solis v. Matheson (9th Cir.); Reich v. Mashantucket Sand & Gravel (2nd Cir.); Donovan v. Coeur d’Alene Tribal Farm (9th Cir.); NLRB v. Pueblo of San Juan (10th Cir.); Montana v. Blackfeet Tribe of Indians; Applicability of the NLRA exception for states & their political subdivisions (§ 152(2)); The Band’s Fair Employment Practices Code (FEPC)

Holding that the petitioner-NLRB may apply the NLRA to the respondent-Little River Band of Ottawa Indians’ operation of a casino resort, the court concluded that the Board had jurisdiction to issue the cease and desist order regarding the Band’s FEPC, which regulates its employees’ employment and labor-organizing activities. The FEPC contains the Band’s policies regarding labor organizations and collective bargaining. This case involved the allegation that the FEPC violated employees’ rights guaranteed by the NLRA. The Band argued that the Board “lacked jurisdiction because the application of the NLRA would impermissibly interfere with the Band’s inherent tribal sovereignty to regulate labor relations on its tribal lands.” The Board concluded that it had jurisdiction and that the Band’s policies had violated the NLRA. Thus, it issued a cease and desist order. “The NLRA prohibits ‘employers’ from engaging in unfair labor practices.” It also “creates the Board’s jurisdiction, empowering it ‘to prevent any person from engaging in any unfair labor practice affecting commerce.’” Other courts have long read Tuscarora “for the proposition that a federal statute creating a comprehensive regulatory scheme presumptively applies to Indian tribes.” They have “developed and employed a test, set forth in Coeur d’Alene, to determine the exceptions to the presumptive application of a general federal statute.” The Band argued that “the Coeur d’Alene framework insufficiently protects” inherent tribal sovereignty and that “generally applicable congressional statutes cannot preempt any exercise of a tribal government’s inherent sovereign authority without a clear expression from Congress.” However, the court was “not persuaded,” and held that “[c]omprehensive federal regulatory schemes that are silent as to Indian tribes can divest aspects of inherent tribal sovereignty to govern the activities of non-members[] . . . where such regulation is not necessary to the preservation of tribal self-government.” The Band could not show that “application of the NLRA to the casino undermines ‘tribal self-governance in purely intramural matters.’” The FEPC provisions at issue “do not regulate purely intramural matters; rather, they principally regulate the labor-organizing activities of Band employees, and specifically of casino employees, most of whom are not Band members.” Thus, the court granted the Board’s application for enforcement of the order.