Wintu Tribe of Northern California v. Department of Interior

A lawsuit filed in the federal district court for the District of Columbia challenged federal approvals for the development of a “massive” casino, hotel, event center, and retail complex by the Rancheria, a federally recognized tribe. The complaint alleged that the new casino resort would be located approximately 1.6 miles from the existing casino resort that the Rancheria operates on lands that the U.S. Department of Interior previously took into trust for the benefit of the Rancheria. The Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs on July 1, 2024 granted the Rancheria’s application to take the Strawberry Fields site just outside the City of Redding into trust for gaming and for the Rancheria to proceed with the new casino project. The plaintiffs—two tribes and a nonprofit association—asserted claims under multiple statutes, including a claim under the Endangered Species Act that was based in part on allegations that the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ analysis of potential adverse effects on listed fish species or their critical habitat did not assess the likelihood of a retention pond that was part of the project “being inundated, and spilling into the Sacramento River, in a present and future marked by increasingly intense storm events driven by climate change.”