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Pursuant to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), P and D, a federally recognized Indian Tribe, entered into a compact in 1993. D may conduct class III gaming on “Indian lands.” It prohibits D from doing so outside that territory. The compact also contains a dispute resolution mechanism, which sends to arbitration any contractual differences the parties cannot settle on their own. The arbitration section states that “nothing in this Compact shall be deemed a waiver” of either D’s or P’s sovereign immunity. In 2010, D opened another class III gaming facility in Vanderbilt, a small village in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula about 125 miles from D’s reservation. D had bought the Vanderbilt property with accrued interest from a federal appropriation, which Congress had made to compensate the Tribe for 19th-century takings of its ancestral lands. Congress had directed that a portion of the appropriated funds go into a “Land Trust” whose earnings the Tribe was to use to improve or purchase property. According to the legislation, any land so acquired “shall be held as Indian lands are held.” D contends that the Vanderbilt property was “Indian land” under IGRA and the compact; and D thus claimed authority to operate a casino there. P sued D in federal court to enjoin the operation of the new casino, alleging that the facility violated IGRA and the compact because it was located outside Indian lands. The Department of the Interior issued an opinion concluding that D’s use of Land Trust earnings to purchase the Vanderbilt property did not convert it into Indian territory. The District Court entered a preliminary injunction against D. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated the injunction, holding (among other things) that tribal sovereign immunity barred P’s suit unless Congress provided otherwise, and that §2710(d)(7)(A)(ii) of the IGRA did not authorize the action. The Court of Appeals concluded that P could proceed, if at all, solely against the individual defendants, and it remanded to the District Court to consider those claims. P appealed.

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