UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT CHICKEN RANCH RANCHERIA No. 21-15751 OF ME-WUK INDIANS; CHEMEHUEVI INDIAN TRIBE; D.C. No. BLUE LAKE RANCHERIA; 1:19-cv-00024- HOPLAND BAND OF POMO AWI-SKO INDIANS; ROBINSON RANCHERIA, Plaintiffs-Appellees, OPINION

v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA; GAVIN NEWSOM, Governor of California, Defendants-Appellants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California Anthony W. Ishii, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 16, 2023 San Francisco, California Filed April 25, 2023 Before: Kim McLane Wardlaw, Daniel A. Bress, and Patrick J. Bumatay, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Bress 2 CHICKEN RANCH RANCHERIA V. STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SUMMARY *

Attorneys’ Fees

The panel denied a request for attorneys’ fees by Indian Tribes that prevailed in their lawsuit against the State of California under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The Tribes sued the State of California for its failure to comply with IGRA. In an earlier opinion (Chicken Ranch I), the panel ruled for the Tribes, first noting that California Government Code § 98005 explicitly waived the state’s sovereign immunity from suit. The panel held that California violated IGRA by failing to negotiate in good faith a Class III gaming compact with the Tribes, and it ordered the district court to implement IGRA’s remedial framework. After prevailing, the Tribes sought attorneys’ fees spent litigating the Chicken Ranch I appeal. Because IGRA does not authorize fee shifting, the Tribes sought attorneys’ fees under California Code of Civil Procedure § 1021.5, which allows an award of fees to a prevailing party “in any action which has resulted in the enforcement of an important right affecting the public interest,” if certain other conditions are met. California argued that, although it consented to the Tribes’ underlying IGRA action, it did not submit to federal court adjudication of an attendant attorneys’ fee motion because attorneys’ fees are not available through an IGRA ** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. CHICKEN RANCH RANCHERIA V. STATE OF CALIFORNIA 3

action. The panel concluded that this contention merely collapsed California’s sovereign immunity defense into its merits argument that IGRA’s lack of a fee-shifting provision was dispositive. The panel held that, because the Tribes prevailed on a federal cause of action, they were entitled to attorneys’ fees only if federal law allowed them. Because it did not, the panel denied the Tribes’ fee request. The panel rejected the Tribes’ argument that there is an exception authorizing attorneys’ fees in federal question cases when the claims implicate “substantial and significant issues of state law.” The panel distinguished Independent Living Center of Southern California, Inc. v. Kent, 909 F.3d 272 (9th Cir. 2018), in which there was no federal cause of action but there was federal question jurisdiction over a state-law claim that fell within a small category cases where a federal issue is necessarily raised, actually disputed, substantial, and capable of resolution in federal court without disturbing the federal-state balance approved by Congress.

COUNSEL Timothy M. Muscat (argued), Deputy Attorney General; Aimee Feinberg, Deputy Solicitor General; William P. Torngren, Supervising Deputy Attorney General; Sara J. Drake, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California; Office of the California Attorney General; Sacramento, California; Noel Fischer, Deputy Attorney General; Office of the Calif