Here is the opinion. From the court’s syllabus:
The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment in an action challenging the constitutionality of H.B. 2534, an Arizona law that allows a city or town within populous counties to annex certain surrounding, unincorporated lands.
The Tohono O’odham Nation purchased unincorporated land in Maricopa County, Arizona. The Nation alleged that H.B. 2534 was enacted in order to block the federal government from taking the land it purchased into trust on behalf of the Nation, a process that would render the land part of the Nation’s reservation pursuant to the Gila Bend Indian Reservation Lands Replacement Act. H.B. 2534 was enacted after the Nation announced its intention to build a casino on “Parcel 2” of the land, and after the Secretary of the Interior decided to take Parcel 2 into trust.
The panel affirmed the district court’s holding that H.B. 2534 is preempted by the Gila Bend Indian Reservation Lands Replacement Act because it stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of the Act namely, to enable the Secretary to take Parcel 2 into trust and thereby incorporate the land into tribal land.
The panel concluded that under H.B. 2534, the City of Glendale, Arizona, purportedly had the authority ̄at the point when the Nation filed a trust application ̄to preemptively annex unincorporated land and effectively block the trust application.
The panel thus affirmed the legality of the Secretary’s taking of Parcel 2 into trust pursuant to the Act. It did not reach the Nation’s other challenges to H.B. 2534.
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