Thomas v. Dugan ( 1998 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
KARLA ANDREA THOMAS; ROBERT
BRENT MILLER,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
JOYCE DUGAN, Chief, individually,
and as Principal Chief of the
No. 97-2717
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians;
EASTERN BAND OF CHEROKEE INDIANS;
TRIBAL CASINO GAMING ENTERPRISE
BOARD, and each individual board
member listed herein as John Does;
CHEROKEE TRIBAL CASINO,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of North Carolina, at Bryson City.
Lacy H. Thornburg, District Judge.
(CA-97-177-C-2, CA-97-178-T-2)
Submitted: November 17, 1998
Decided: December 31, 1998
Before ERVIN, HAMILTON, and MOTZ, Circuit Judges.
_________________________________________________________________
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
_________________________________________________________________
COUNSEL
Russell L. McLean, III, LAW OFFICE OF RUSSELL L. MCLEAN,
III, Waynesville, North Carolina, for Appellants. Frank G. Queen,
BROWN, QUEEN, PATTEN & JENKINS, P.A., Waynesville, North
Carolina; Michael L. Bonfoey, BROWN, WARD & HAYNES, P.A.,
Waynesville, North Carolina; Bradley B. Letts, Cherokee, North Car-
olina, for Appellees.
_________________________________________________________________
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit. See
Local Rule 36(c).
_________________________________________________________________
OPINION
PER CURIAM:
Appellants Karla Andrea Thomas and Robert Brent Miller appeal
from a district court order that dismissed their civil action under Fed.
R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). Appellants alleged that their employment with the
Cherokee Indian Tribal Casino was terminated because they are non-
Indians and that such racial discrimination violated federal and state
law. Because we agree with the district court's conclusion that the
tribal entities are immune from such a suit, we affirm.
We review a district court's dismissal for failure to state a claim
under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) de novo. See Mylan Labs., Inc. v.
Matkari, 7 F.3d 1130, 1134 (4th Cir. 1993). A motion to dismiss for
failure to state a claim should not be granted unless it appears that the
plaintiffs can prove no set of facts which would support their claim
and entitle them to relief. See id. (citations omitted). The court should
accept all well pleaded allegations as true and view the complaint in
the light most favorable to the plaintiffs. See id.An Indian tribe is specifically excluded from the definition of "em-
ployer" under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(b) (1994). Therefore, the district
court properly held that Appellants' Title VII claims fail for that rea-
son. Moreover, the district court properly found that Indian tribes gen-
erally enjoy a common law immunity from suit. See Hardin v. White
Mountain Apache Tribe, 779 F.2d 476, 478-79 (9th Cir. 1985). Tribal
entities and individual tribal officers acting within their representative
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capacity within the scope of their authority are also shielded by sover-
eign immunity. See id. at 479; see also Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache
Tribe, 455 U.S. 130 (1982) (discussing tribal sovereign authority to
tax). Indian tribes are "quasi-sovereign nations which, by government
structure, culture, and source of sovereignty are in many ways foreign
to the constitutional institutions of the Federal and State Govern-
ments." Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 71 (1978).
Thus, the district court correctly dismissed Appellants' federal claims
on grounds of sovereign immunity. Because Appellants' federal
claims were properly dismissed, so were the remaining state law
claims. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3) (1994).
For these reasons, we affirm the district court's order. We previ-
ously granted the parties' motion to submit this appeal on the briefs
without oral argument because the facts and legal issues are ade-
quately presented in the materials before the Court and argument
would not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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