Santa Ynez Valley-based land preservation group Save the Valley LLC is appealing a decision by the United States to remove a case by the group against the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians to federal court.
The legal challenge began in 2015, when Save the Valley sought to intervene in a century-old case related to the establishment of the Chumash reservation. A 1906 judgment on The Roman Catholic Bishop of Monterey v. Salomon Cota et al. allegedly restricted the Chumash’s land use to “occupancy only” and its water access to “domestic use.” Save the Valley claimed the Chumash Casino Resort violated this judgment and sought to re-enforce it.
“Judgments don’t become stale,” Save the Valley attorney Matthew Clarke told the Sun in a previous interview. “Judgments are good, especially judgments which restrict land. The restriction on land use continues forever.”
The Chumash moved to dismiss the case, but the motion was not granted. Shortly thereafter, the United States removed the case from superior court to federal court, with federal attorneys claiming that a case challenging government property rights is a case against the United States.
Clarke disagrees.
“Save the Valley LLC believes that the issue is for a local Santa Barbara Court to decide,” he wrote in an Aug. 19 press release.
Save the Valley appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting to return the case to the Santa Barbara County Superior Court.
Clarke iterated in Save the Valley’s Aug. 15 opening brief that the group only seeks intervention “to enforce an existing judgment” and that the “proposed intervention would not enlarge or amplify the existing or inherent legal or factual issues in the case.”
Save the Valley’s appeal is the latest in a series of legal actions by the group attempting to halt operations of the Chumash Casino Resort. Previously, Save the Valley filed a complaint against the Chumash for declaratory judgment and permanent injunction on the casino expansion project, but a U.S. District Court dismissed the complaint in July 2015.
The expanded casino has since opened and is operating, but Save the Valley’s appeal means the group is still vying to shut it down.
“The [tribe’s] very recent 12-story hotel/casino expansion project on the property in question, in violation of Santa Barbara County safety regulations and land-use laws putting thousands of lives at risk, made Save the Valley’s intervention ripe and timely,” Clarke wrote in the opening brief.
This article appears in Aug 25 – Sep 1, 2016.