WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 4, 2023) – The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. recently ruled in favor of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation’s challenge to the methodology used by the U.S. Treasury Department to distribute federal COVID relief money to Tribal governments.
In a decision that will have far-reaching effects on future funding decisions in Washington, the Court found that Treasury’s use of HUD block grant formula to distribute Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding was “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.
“IHBG severely undercounts our communities and this impacts life-saving funding. This ruling is a clear vindication of Prairie Band’s effort to ensure that the federal government counts tribal citizens rather than relying on gerrymandered population metrics,” said Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick. “This case is yet another example of Tribes having to fight for what they’re rightly eligible for and only being recognized by the government after a lengthy legal struggle, which in this case required two separate trips to the Court of Appeals.”
The decision arises from a series of lawsuits, the first of which was filed by Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.
The aggrieved tribes in these lawsuits challenged Treasury’s choice of Indian Housing Block Grant (IHBG) data, a flawed population metric, rather than simple tribal enrollment for the calculation of per capita payments to tribes.
The tribal governments had previously prevailed in the same Court by arguing that the block grant formula was unsuitable and led to absurd results.
After the first rebuke from the court, Treasury was tasked with using tribal enrollment to fix the disparities. Instead of doing that, the Treasury implemented a convoluted “ramp down” formula that paid some tribes including Prairie Band a fraction of what other tribes received on a per capita basis. The Court of Appeals, in its second decision in the case, again reversed Treasury’s decision on the basis that Treasury had failed to “to provide a legitimate reason” for failing to treat “similar cases in a similar manner.”
Thus far, Prairie Band and other aggrieved tribes have won the reallocation of approximately $85 million to themselves and other tribes affected by Treasury’s choice of the HUD block grant data.