White worker sues tribes

OLYMPIA – A white construction worker is suing two Colville tribal corporations, alleging that he was harassed out of his job by racial slurs and abuse from Native American co-workers.

Tribal attorneys say that Christopher Wright’s employer, as a tribal entity, is entitled to sovereign immunity. Whatever might have happened to Wright, they say, he cannot sue for damages in state court.

What started out as a harassment claim, however, could have ramifications far beyond workplace conditions on a construction job site. Wright’s case hinges on convincing seemingly skeptical justices that tribes’ immunity unfairly shields tribal for-profit corporations doing off-reservation work.

They “can be just running around the state and just not following the law,” said Wright’s attorney, Breean Beggs. “They can be polluting, they can be manufacturing products that are dangerous, and you can’t do anything about it, under their (legal) theory.”

So far, Wright has lost in one courtroom and won in another. On Tuesday, his case was heard by the state Supreme Court, the first time in more than 25 years that the high court has heard a tribal sovereign immunity case. A ruling is likely months away.

Tribal attorneys insist that the Colville corporations are immune to state suits. Tribal government relies on income from those ventures, they said.

And it’s not as if Wright has no recourse, tribal attorney Michael Griffin told the high court Tuesday. Wright is welcome to file his case in tribal court in Nespelum.

“The tribal court is wide open to litigants like Mr. Wright,” said Griffin, a lawyer for the Colville Tribal Enterprise Corp.

“If Mr. Wright invokes the jurisdiction of the tribal court, he will be heard.”

Beggs said Colville tribal law is unclear about whether a non-Indian can sue the tribe in such a case.

More importantly, he says, the alleged harassment of Wright took place on a job site hundreds of miles away from the Colvilles’ reservation. As a non-Indian off tribal land, Beggs said, Wright should have the right to sue in state court.

Tribal sovereign immunity from lawsuits is well established in federal law. In general, Indian tribes can be sued in local or state courts only when the tribe agrees to the suit or when Congress allows it.

The goal of this longstanding immunity, according to Supreme Court rulings and legal experts, was to protect the struggling tribes from being stripped of their land and other assets.

Now, as gambling and other tribal ventures have spun off other enterprises, lawsuits in other states are testing the limits of that immunity.

It’s one thing to protect the tribe, Beggs told the high court Tuesday, but it’s quite another to protect for-profit corporations they create.

That’s a distinction without a difference, the tribal attorneys say.

“This is not a private enterprise out on a lark doing business in the state of Washington,” attorney Bruce Didesch told an Island County judge at the start of the case. “It’s a tribal government that has created an economic arm, a governmental corporation … to pay for government services.”

None of these legal questions were on Wright’s mind when he took a construction job in Oak Harbor in 2002. A pipe layer and equipment operator, he was happy to get work on the $4 million job replacing a water system at Navy housing on Whidbey Island. His employer: the Colville Tribal Services Corp.

The company is one of 14 business enterprises run by the Colville Tribal Enterprise Corp. Some 80 percent of the corporation’s profits – most from gambling, forest products and construction – support tribal government services.

At first, Wright said, the job went well. But as the workload increased and the job site grew cramped, tensions rose. One co-worker, he said, “constantly spat on me when I was working in the ditch below him and shouted things at me like … ‘You’re my white bitch.’ ” He said two co-workers, without permission, took his Honda for a joyride. Another allegedly called him a “Nazi German bastard” and threatened to kill whites and burn their homes.

He said he repeatedly complained to his boss, Don Braman. Court records show that Colville Tribal Enterprise Corp. officials called one meeting and told workers that racial epithets and harassment wouldn’t be tolerated. Wright said the harassment continued.

In February 2003, after eight months on the job, he quit.

In Olympia on Tuesday, several justices seemed leery of trying to find a dividing line between the Colville tribes and their businesses.

“The tribe owns the corporation, controls the corporation, gets the proceeds from the corporation,” Justice Richard Sanders told Beggs. “What more do you need?”

Beggs told the court that the construction firm likely has insurance to cover such a suit, so it’s unlikely that Wright’s case would actually harm the tribe.

“That’s in this case,” said Justice Barbara Madsen. “But you don’t know what the next case will look like.”