## Facts

- Congress enacted § 12 of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (25 U.S.C. § 472), establishing an employment preference for “qualified Indians” in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
- In 1972, Congress extended Title VII’s anti-discrimination regime to most federal employment through the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972.
- In June 1972, the BIA applied the Indian preference to promotions as well as initial hiring.
- Non-Indian BIA employees sued as a class, claiming the 1972 Act implicitly repealed § 472 and that the preference violated the Fifth Amendment by depriving them of property without due process and by operating as invidious discrimination.
- A three-judge federal district court enjoined implementation of any Indian preference in BIA employment on the view that the 1972 Act repealed § 472 by implication.

## Issues

1. Whether the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 implicitly repealed the Indian preference for BIA employment contained in 25 U.S.C. § 472.
2. Whether the Indian preference violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause (including its equal protection component) as an impermissible racial classification or as a deprivation of protected interests without due process.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the district court.
- The Court held the 1972 Act did not repeal the BIA Indian preference by implication; the statutes were capable of coexistence and there was no clear congressional intent to displace the specific preference provision.
- The Court held the preference was constitutional because it was tied to tribal membership and Congress’s special relationship with tribes, not an invidious racial classification.
- The Court rejected the due process/property-rights challenge because the preference was a valid employment criterion reasonably connected to legitimate governmental objectives.

## Legal Principles

- Repeal by implication is strongly disfavored; a later general statute does not ordinarily displace a longstanding, specific statutory scheme absent clear evidence of congressional intent.
- Statutory provisions preserving Indian preferences in related Title VII contexts, together with contemporaneous federal enactments authorizing Indian preferences, support reading federal anti-discrimination law as leaving Indian preference measures intact.
- A preference limited to members of federally recognized tribes may be treated as a political classification linked to the federal government’s unique obligations to tribes, rather than a racial classification.
- Such political classifications are permissible under the Fifth Amendment when reasonably and directly related to legitimate governmental goals such as tribal self-government and fulfillment of the federal trust responsibility.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld the BIA’s Indian employment preference, ruling that the 1972 federal employment anti-discrimination amendments did not impliedly repeal the specific statutory preference and that the preference is a permissible political classification rationally related to Congress’s obligations to federally recognized tribes.


Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535 (1974)