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U.S. Court of Appeals in Cobell v. Norton Internet Security Case Upholds District Court's Role in Ensuring Individual Indian Trust Data Is Secure

Injunction Shutting Down U.S. Department of the Interior's Internet Connections Is Vacated on Procedural Grounds, But Unanimous Appeals Court Panel Rejects Every Other Government Argument WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- A unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals in Washington has ruled decisively that U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth did not exceed his authority in issuing injunctions for securing the computer data in the historic Cobell v. Norton Individual Indian Trust case. The Appeals Court went further, explicitly affirming the district court's discretion to fashion broad remedies in resolving the largest lawsuit ever filed against the United States government. The government's appeal of the district court injunctions was one of two appeals argued in September before the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The other is a substantive review of the September 2003 trial victory by the Plaintiffs in what is called "Trial 1.5" of the eight-year-old Indian Trust saga. For procedural reasons, the Appeals Court lifted a preliminary injunction issued by the district court on March 15, 2004, stating that Judge Lamberth should have held an evidentiary hearing and taken other steps prior to entering the preliminary injunction. Beyond these narrow procedural issues, the Court of Appeals rejected all of the government's jurisdictional and substantive legal arguments. The Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) had challenged the injunction, as well as prior orders of the district court relating to IT security, as lacking any legal foundation or factual precedent. The Court said: "We hold, contrary to the Secretary's contention, that issuance of the March 15, 2004 injunction is not precluded [by public law]. We further hold that the district court's jurisdiction properly extends to security of Interior's information technology systems ("IT") housing or accessing [the Individual Indian Trust data (IITD)], because the Secretary, as a fiduciary, is to maintain and preserve IITD." The Court went on to say: "It is indisputable that the Secretary has current and prospective trust management duties that necessitate maintaining secure IT systems in order to render accurate accountings now and in the future." "It is only by mischaracterizing the March 15, 2004 injunction," the Court continued, "that the Secretary can now contend that the district court dictated Interior's actions for improving IT system security, and therefore violated the separation of powers." The Court of Appeals also held that the district court retains substantial authority "to fashion an equitable remedy because the underlying lawsuit is both an Indian case and a trust case in which the trustees have egregiously breached their fiduciary duties." "This is a huge step for justice," said Elouise Cobell, a Blackfeet banker who is the lead plaintiff in the case. "It is the beginning of the end of more than 100 years of destroying and mishandling data relating to what is owed to American Indians for the use of their land." "The implications of this decision go far beyond IT security," said Keith Harper, attorney for more than 500,000 plaintiffs in the Individual Indian Trust case. "The Court of Appeals has wholly affirmed the right of the District Court to exercise its discretion -- not just in securing the IT data, but also in all other aspects of the case." The Plaintiffs were also victorious in the first Cobell trial in 1999. That judgment was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2001. About Cobell v. Norton Cobell v. Norton was originally filed in 1996 by lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell, who had tried for years to get an accurate accounting of funds held in trust by the U.S. government for individual Indian-owned land that had been leased by the federal government for mining, grazing, oil and gas exploration and other uses. In two separate trials, a federal judge found that the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Treasury engaged in "fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form" in maintaining and accounting for the trust assets belonging to 500,000 individual Indians.

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