Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry LLP

05/07/2024

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our partner, mentor and friend, Harry Sachse.

Harry practiced the law with a belief it was a powerful tool of good. It is because of this belief that he was able to achieve so much.
May his memory be a blessing to all.

02/02/2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/02/01/opioid-settlement-native-american-tribes/

Congratulations to our great team at Sonosky, Don, Lloyd and Whitney for your great work on this vital settlement.

McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen reached a deal to pay $515 million over six years to the federally recognized tribes, while Johnson & Johnson would distribute $150 million in two years, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

01/05/2022

We are so proud to have Ryan join the Firm.

05/03/2021

Congratulations to our client the Fond du Lac Band and our Partner Vanessa Ray-Hodge.

SAINT PAUL, Minn. — On Wednesday, April 28, the Minnesota Supreme Court blocked a critical permit for the controversial Polymet copper-nickel mine in northeastern Minnesota. The denial affirms a lower court’s decision on January 13, 2020 that required the company to gather more information on th...

04/27/2021

Great discussion today.

Thank you to Dan Reicher of Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Tom Kiernan of American Rivers, Mary J. Pavel of Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry LLP, and Steve Clemmer of Union of Concerned Scientists for participating in a panel discussion on the vision of in a world.

04/20/2021

National Congress of American Indians’ President Fawn Sharp and 1st Vice President Aaron Payment invite you to an evening celebrating Indigenous Literature. Join bestselling authors Angeline Boulley and Louise Erdrich for a conversation about the making of Firekeeper's Daughter, the groundbreaking, instant #1 New York Times bestseller about an Ojibwe teen who goes undercover to root out corruption in her community. Hosted by Representative Dan Kildee with opening remarks from special guests Secretary Deb Haaland, Senator Debbie Stabenow, Senator Gary Peters, and Representative Sharice Davids before this not-to-be-missed conversation.

The conversation will be held on April 27, 2021 at 7 p.m. EDT.
Click below to register.

National Congress of American Indians’ President Fawn Sharp and 1st Vice President Aaron Payment invite you to join bestselling authors Angeline Boulley and Louise Erdrich for an evening of conversation about the making of Firekeeper's Daughter, the groundbreaking, instant #1 New York Times bestse...

02/12/2021

Congratulations to our clients and our Partner Lloyd Miller

Judge John Coughenour said federal officials could have avoided a “public relations disaster” if they had “displayed some sensitivity” to how the loss of the archives would affect the Northwest.

07/10/2020

We congratulate our client the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in its continuing fight against the DAPL pipeline. This picture is from four years ago. The day of the first argument in Court.

07/10/2020

Congratulations to our Partner Mary Pavel for being the first Native American named to Dartmouth College's Rockefeller Center Board of Visitors.

07/10/2020

We congratulate the Skokomish Tribe on the return of the first Sockeye Salmon in the Skokomish River in more than 90 years.

03/13/2020

The President today declared the Coronavirus pandemic to be a national emergency. We know that Tribes throughout the country are working to ensure that your community and your tribal members are protected and have the best access to resources and information available. As always, we stand ready to assist you in any way you direct. We are working with members of Congress and the Administration to ensure that Tribes have access to federal resources on the same basis as state and local governments to respond to this national emergency.

The Sonosky Firm is open and all of our offices remain available to meet your legal needs in this difficult time. We also have contingencies in place to ensure firm operations and attorney work can be carried on without any major interruptions in the event government officials require that our offices close. We will be available to you if and when you need us.

Last week, Congress provided emergency funding to the CDC and mandated a minimum set-aside of $40 million to provide Tribes with resources to respond to the COVID-19 emergency. The Indian Health Services is working to allocate this funding to Indian Country. Through this set-aside funding, Tribes will be able to seek reimbursement for health care costs expended for COVID-19 response efforts. We encourage Tribes to carefully track these costs in order to be able to efficiently apply for this reimbursement.

The Indian Health Services is holding a weekly teleconference that we will join and would encourage you to participate in. The call information is:

Thursday March 19, 2020 at 3:30 PM EDT for an important update on the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Tribal Leaders will have an opportunity to provide comments and ask questions to federal officials.
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2020
Time: 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM (Eastern)
Conference Call: 800-857-5577
Participant Passcode: 6703929
Webinar Adobe Connect: https://ihs.cosocloud.com/r4k6jib09mj/
Participant Password: ihs123

As you work to develop your specific COVID-19 response plan, we encourage you to consider the CDC guidance, as well as guidance from the World Health Organization, related to the safe practices in the work place, as well as general guidance for dealing with crowds and participation in large events:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/

www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/guidance-business-response.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fspecific-groups%2Fguidance-business-response.html

www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/large-events/mass-gatherings-ready-for-covid- 19.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcommunity%2Fmass-gatherings-ready-for-covid-19.html

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019

Finally, the House is preparing to pass a second Family First COVID-19 Response bill, which we understand will provide for national sick leave for those impacted, expanded SNAP benefits, access to meals for children whose schools have closed and expanded unemployment insurance benefits, as well as $64 million in additional resources for the Indian Health Service testing capability, and $10 million for the native elder food program. The Senate will take up the measure next week. We will keep you informed as this develops.

CDC Coronavirus: Coronaviruses are common throughout the world. They can infect people and animals. Five different coronaviruses can infect people and make them sick. They usually cause mild to moderate upper-respiratory illness.

02/04/2020

DC Judge Says Gov't Has Dirty Hands In Tribal Land Fight
By Nadia Dreid
Law360 (January 29, 2020, 8:26 PM EST) -- The government “doesn’t have clean hands” in a fight over its failure to clean up and transfer oil-contaminated land to an Alaskan tribal health care nonprofit a quarter of a century after it was supposed to, a D.C. federal judge said Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan struggled to comprehend the government’s argument Wednesday morning that tribal nonprofit Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp.’s claims were time-barred because it had not brought suit 20 years ago.

“The plaintiffs weren’t just sitting around and then realized ‘Oh, 27 years have passed,’” Judge Chutkan said. “There’s a long record between the parties here.”

Congress ordered the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Air Force to clean up and hand over the land by the end of 1993, but that never happened. The nonprofit has maintained “good faith” negotiations over the years to try to speed the process along, while the government made excuses for the delays, the judge said.

But because the tribal nonprofit did not sue within six years of the government's missing the deadline to fix up and swap over the land, the statute of limitations has run out, the government’s attorney told the court.

The health nonprofit’s only recourse would be to go to Congress and ask for a new law or to wait until the agency issued a final action on the matter, at which point it could ask the court to review that action, the government said.

“So the position the agency is taking now is that it has no duty to do it and there are no repercussions?” Judge Chutkan said. “The parties have engaged in good faith negotiations over 27 years, and now your position is ‘we’ll get to it when we get to it, if we get to it.’”

If that were true, Judge Chutkan said, it would “gut” the Administrative Procedure Act’s unreasonable delay provision.

The health nonprofit, run by 58 federally recognized tribes in southwest Alaska, wants to build a hospital and housing for medical staff in Bethel, Alaska, and asked the court in 2017 to force the Air Force and the DOI’s Bureau of Indian Affairs to comply with its congressional mandate to clean up the oil-contaminated land and hand it over.

Failing to do so for more than 26 years after the deadline constitutes unreasonable delay under the Administrative Procedures Act, the nonprofit told the court.

The government's continued failure to comply with that mandate triggers the continuing violation doctrine and pauses the statute of limitations clock, the suit claims.

But now the government wants out of the suit.

Judge Chutkan, who cooled herself with a red Chinese-style folding fan as she heard arguments Wednesday, said she would try to have a ruling shortly.

The Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corp. was represented by Whitney A. Leonard, Rebecca A. Patterson and Lloyd B. Miller of Sonosky Chambers Sachse Miller & Monkman LLP.

The United States is represented by Derek S. Hammond of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The case is Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. v. U.S. et al., case number 1:17-cv-02474, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

--Additional reporting by Chuck Stanley and Andrew Westney. Editing by Peter Rozovsky.