## Facts

- The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) is a consortium of thirteen Chippewa tribes formed to regulate and enforce member tribes’ hunting, fishing, and gathering rights.
- GLIFWC employed field law-enforcement officers to patrol and enforce tribal rules and treaty-related rights during hunting and fishing seasons.
- The Secretary of Labor investigated whether GLIFWC violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by failing to pay overtime to officers working more than 40 hours per week.
- GLIFWC admitted it did not pay time-and-a-half for overtime but asserted the FLSA did not apply to it due to its tribal governmental status.
- The Department of Labor issued an administrative subpoena seeking payroll and related records to support a potential FLSA enforcement action.
- The district court refused to enforce the subpoena, concluding GLIFWC was not subject to the FLSA; the Secretary appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether a court may resolve statutory coverage and deny agency subpoena enforcement at the subpoena-enforcement stage when the jurisdictional question is ripe and purely legal.
2. Whether the FLSA applies to a tribal consortium performing core tribal law-enforcement and regulatory functions, making it an “employer” required to pay overtime under the Act.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed the denial of subpoena enforcement.
- The court held that statutory coverage and regulatory jurisdiction may be decided at the subpoena-enforcement stage when the issue is ripe, purely legal, and not dependent on subpoenaed information.
- The court held the FLSA did not apply to GLIFWC’s law-enforcement officers because applying federal overtime rules in this setting would intrude on internal tribal self-government absent clear congressional direction.
- Because the Department of Labor lacked jurisdiction over the wages at issue, the subpoena could not be enforced.

## Legal Principles

- A court may refuse to enforce an administrative subpoena if the issuing agency plainly lacks regulatory jurisdiction and the jurisdictional issue can be decided without the subpoenaed materials.
- Although federal statutes of general application may apply to tribal entities, courts avoid applying such statutes where application would interfere with tribal self-government in intramural governmental matters, absent clear congressional intent.
- Tribal law-enforcement and regulation of treaty-related hunting and fishing rights are governmental functions closely tied to tribal sovereignty; federal wage regulation of those functions may be treated as an impermissible intrusion without an explicit congressional command.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the district court’s refusal to enforce the Department of Labor’s subpoena because the FLSA did not reach a tribal consortium’s internal law-enforcement activities, and the resulting lack of regulatory jurisdiction made subpoena compliance an unjustified burden.


Reich v. Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Comm'n, 4 F.3d 490 (7th Cir. 1993)