## Facts

- The Upper Skagit Indian Tribe bought a roughly 40-acre parcel of fee land in Skagit County, Washington.
- A post-purchase survey led the Tribe to assert that about one acre across an existing fence belonged to the Tribe.
- The Lundgrens owned the adjacent fee land and treated the fence as the property line for decades, maintaining the disputed strip and harvesting timber there.
- The Lundgrens filed a state-court quiet title action, alleging ownership by adverse possession or mutual recognition and acquiescence long before the Tribe’s purchase.
- The Tribe moved to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, asserting tribal sovereign immunity.

## Issues

1. Whether a state court’s exercise of in rem jurisdiction over real property defeats tribal sovereign immunity absent waiver or congressional abrogation.
2. Whether prior precedent about state taxation of certain Indian lands established that tribal sovereign immunity does not apply to in rem suits.
3. Whether state courts should recognize a common-law “immovable property” exception to tribal sovereign immunity for disputes over off-reservation fee land.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court vacated and remanded the Washington Supreme Court’s judgment.
- The Court held that the state court misread precedent as creating a categorical rule that tribal sovereign immunity does not apply in in rem actions.
- The Court declined to decide, in the first instance, whether a common-law immovable-property exception limits tribal sovereign immunity, and instructed the Washington Supreme Court to consider that argument on remand.

## Legal Principles

- Tribal sovereign immunity bars suit unless the tribe waives immunity or Congress unequivocally abrogates it.
- A suit’s characterization as in rem does not, by itself, resolve whether tribal sovereign immunity applies.
- Precedent permitting certain state in rem property taxes on particular lands did not decide the scope of tribal sovereign immunity in in rem actions.
- When a potentially dispositive theory (such as an immovable-property exception) is raised late and not addressed below, the Court may remand for initial consideration by the state court.

## Conclusion

The Court rejected a categorical state-court rule that in rem jurisdiction over land automatically permits quiet title litigation against a tribe, vacated the judgment resting on that theory, and remanded for the state court to address whether a common-law immovable-property exception limits tribal sovereign immunity in this context.


Upper Skagit Indian Tribe v. Lundgren, 138 S. Ct. 1649 (2018)