## Facts

- A vehicle driven by Gisela Fredericks collided with a truck driven by Lyle Stockert on a North Dakota state highway segment running through the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
- The highway lay within a federally granted right-of-way on trust land, was open to the public, and was maintained and traffic-regulated by the State of North Dakota.
- Fredericks and Stockert were nonmembers of the Three Affiliated Tribes; the truck was owned by A-1 Contractors, a non-Indian-owned company.
- Fredericks and her adult children (tribal members) sued Stockert and A-1 in tribal court for personal injury and loss of consortium.
- The tribal trial court and an intertribal appellate court held the tribal court had civil jurisdiction.
- Stockert and A-1 sought declaratory and injunctive relief in federal district court to halt the tribal case; the district court dismissed, concluding the tribal court had jurisdiction.
- The en banc Eighth Circuit reversed, holding the tribal court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction under Montana v. United States.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether tribal adjudicatory jurisdiction existed over this nonmember-on-nonmember highway tort suit.

## Issues

1. Whether a tribal court has civil adjudicatory jurisdiction over a tort action between nonmembers arising from a traffic accident on a state-maintained public highway within a reservation under a federally granted right-of-way.
2. Whether the highway right-of-way should be treated as non-Indian land for applying Montana’s limits on tribal civil authority over nonmembers.
3. Whether either Montana exception (consensual relationships; conduct threatening tribal political integrity, economic security, or health and welfare) permits tribal-court jurisdiction over this dispute.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Eighth Circuit.
- The Court held the tribal court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over the claims against Stockert and A-1.
- The Court treated the state-maintained highway right-of-way as the functional equivalent of non-Indian fee land for Montana analysis.
- Neither Montana exception applied to a routine traffic-accident tort suit between nonmembers on a public highway.
- Because tribal jurisdiction was absent under Montana and no statute or treaty supplied authority, adjudication lay in state or federal court rather than tribal court.

## Legal Principles

- Absent congressional authorization, a tribe’s inherent civil authority generally does not extend to nonmembers’ conduct on non-Indian land within a reservation; Montana supplies the controlling framework.
- A state-maintained public highway right-of-way granted by the federal government, with state responsibility for maintenance and traffic regulation and minimal tribal control, is treated like non-Indian land for tribal civil jurisdiction purposes.
- Montana’s first exception (consensual relationships) requires a direct nexus between the nonmember’s consensual arrangement with the tribe or its members and the conduct giving rise to the claim; a nonmember traffic accident on a public highway does not qualify merely because one party has other contractual ties to a tribal entity.
- Montana’s second exception covers nonmember conduct that directly threatens tribal political integrity, economic security, or the health and welfare of the tribe as a community; an ordinary tort claim from a single highway accident does not meet that standard.
- Tribal-remedy exhaustion doctrines do not create jurisdiction; when it is clear that tribal courts lack adjudicatory authority under Montana, exhaustion is not required.

## Conclusion

The Court held that, without a statute or treaty authorizing tribal governance of nonmembers on a state-maintained public highway right-of-way, tribal courts may not adjudicate a nonmember tort suit arising from a traffic accident on that highway.


Strate v. A-1 Contractors, 520 U.S. 438 (1997)