Connecticut: Tribe can’t sue state for $600M for land grab
HARTFORD, Conn. – State officials are claiming government immunity in response to a lawsuit by a Native American tribe seeking more than $600 million for land it says the state seized from 1801 to 1918.
The state attorney general’s office asked a state judge in Hartford on Tuesday to dismiss the lawsuit filed in October by the Schaghticoke (SKAT’-uh-coke) Tribal Nation. The motion includes the state’s first public response to the lawsuit.
The tribe alleges the state took 2,000 of the 2,400 acres in the tribe’s reservation in western Connecticut and sold the land, but never compensated the tribe.
The state says it’s immune from the lawsuit. It also questions the Tribal Nation’s standing to file the lawsuit because at least two other factions of the tribe claim leadership authority.
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