sovereignty

A plaintiff's lawyer argues that there was no protection for his client, who worked for an American Indian casino, from allegedly being "repeatedly subjected to offensive and explicit conduct based on race, sex and national origin, including being  'dry humped' by his supervisor, having KKK photos emailed to him, being called a Nazi, being given the 'Heil Hitler' salute, having to hear about his supervisor’s sexual acts and hearing customers being racially denigrated," according to this piece in the San Francisco Examiner. Any sovereign nation sets its own rules on what protection should be given from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and other characteristics, and the attorney argues against "using the concept of national sovereignty to deny people their basic rights to safety and fair treatment. Ironically, Native Americans, themselves the subject of genocide and centuries of state-sponsored discrimination and civil-rights abuse, exempt themselves from adhering to any legal protections against discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc."

A federal judge in New York has ruled the state's banking regulator can control the lending done to New York consumers by online lenders associated with sovereign American Indian tribes, the Washington Post reports. Loans are made by the lenders that violate state law, including on maximum interest rates. "Once states began introducing interest rate caps, some ... lenders began forging relationships with Native American groups to take advantage of their sovereign-nation status," the Post reports. The tribal plaintiffs argued the ruling undermines their sovereignty and their ability to be economically self-sufficient, the Post also reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments December 2 in the case of an off-reservation casino in Michigan that is opposed by the state, the Petoskey News reported. The justices will consider whether a state can challenge a tribe’s right to open a casino if the state contends the gaming facility is on land that doesn't qualify as tribal land, Indian Country Today reported this summer: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/07/03/reservation-tribal-...