Federal Court Dismisses Title VII Claim against Seminole Casino

Here are the materials in Longo v. Seminole Indian Casino–Immokalee (M.D. Fla.):

24 Motion to Dismiss

25 Response

28 Reply

29 Surreply

31 DCT Order

An excerpt:

Remarkably, Plaintiff demands that the Court ignore this clear and dispositive analysis, and hold that the Tribe is not actually a federally recognized tribe. Plaintiff acknowledges that to do so, this Court would have to find not only that its own previous opinion, Mastro v. Seminole Tribe of Florida, No. 2:12–cv–411–SPC–38UAM, 2013 WL 3350567, at *1 (M.D.Fla.2013), was incorrect, but also that the Eleventh Circuit has erred on multiple occasions too, see Mastro, 578 F.App’x 801; Contour Spa at the Hard Rock, Inc. v. Seminole Tribe of Florida, 692 F.3d 1200 (11th Cir.2012). To support this sizeable request, Plaintiff provides the Court with numerous pages of historical context and argument, explaining how the Tribe, to this date, has failed to achieve federal recognition as an Indian tribe. But this argument is completely without merit. This Court, the Eleventh Circuit, and the Florida Supreme Court “rotely” accept that the Tribe is federally recognized because it is. Unsurprisingly, this has not changed in 2015. A simple search in the Federal Register reveals as much. To be sure, the United States Bureau of Indian Affair’s most recent list of “Indian entities … acknowledged to have the immunities and privileges available to federally recognized Indian tribes” includes the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Indian Entities Recognized and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, 80 FR 1942–02 (2015) (emphasis added).

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