Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez

Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 29, 1977
Decided May 15, 1978
Full case nameSanta Clara Pueblo et al., v. Julia Martinez et al.
Docket no.76-682
Citations436 U.S. 49 (more)
98 S. Ct. 1670; 56 L. Ed. 2d 106; 1978 U.S. LEXIS 8
Case history
PriorDecision in favor of respondents, Martinez v. Santa Clara Pueblo, 402 F. Supp. 5 (D.N.M. 1975); reversed and remanded, Martinez v. Santa Clara Pueblo, 540 F.2d 1039 (10th Cir. 1976); cert. granted, 431 U.S. 913 (1977).
Holding
Title I of the Indian Civil Rights Act does not expressly or implicitly create a cause of action for declaratory and injunctive relief in the federal courts.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Warren E. Burger
Associate Justices
William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart
Byron White · Thurgood Marshall
Harry Blackmun · Lewis F. Powell Jr.
William Rehnquist · John P. Stevens
Case opinions
MajorityMarshall, joined by Burger, Brennan, Stewart, Powell, Stevens, and Rehnquist (all but Part III)
DissentWhite
Blackmun took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49 (1978), was a landmark case in the area of federal Indian law involving issues of great importance to the meaning of tribal sovereignty in the contemporary United States. The Supreme Court sustained a law passed by the governing body of the Santa Clara Pueblo that explicitly discriminated on the basis of sex.[1] In so doing, the Court advanced a theory of tribal sovereignty that weighed the interests of tribes sufficient to justify a law that, had it been passed by a state legislature or Congress, would have almost certainly been struck down as a violation of equal protection.

Along with the watershed cases, United States v. Wheeler and Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, Santa Clara completed the trilogy of seminal Indian law cases to come down in the 1978 term.[2]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference op was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Ezekiel J.N. Fletcher, Trapped in the Spring of 1978: The Continuing Impact of The Supreme Court's Decision in Oliphant, Wheeler, and Martinez, 55 APR Fed. Law 36 (2008).