Lac du Flambeau tribe sued for restricting access to private boat launch

Property owners are suing the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa for allegedly restricting their access to a boat launch on private property.

The White Sand Lake Association, an organization made up of homeowners and other locals, and its members filed a lawsuit against the tribe in federal court earlier this month.

White Sand Lake is a more than 1,200-acre lake in Lac du Flambeau. 

According to the lawsuit, the association built a boat launch on the private property of Mary Lou Fisher, one of the plaintiffs, but the tribe claimed the boat launch violated its tribal code.

Eventually, the tribe took the association to tribal court, where it won an injunction blocking them from using the boat launch, the suit says. 

The civil complaint claims the injunction ignored precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

The property owners say their only recourse is the U.S. District Court of Western Wisconsin.

“They cannot use their own residential land except under threat of tribal sanction,” the lawsuit reads. “The Band’s regulatory and enforcement activities conflict not only with plaintiffs’ rights, but with the inherent sovereignty of the state of Wisconsin. Plaintiffs’ attempts to raise these jurisdictional issues have fallen on deaf ears.”

In a statement, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa said the tribe would respond to the lawsuit in court through legal channels. 

But it also said it had a “stewardship responsibility” to the lands, waters and cultural resources “within the exterior boundaries of the reservation.” 

“Reservation waters — including White Sand Lake — are threatened by documented environmental concerns, including the presence and spread of Eurasian watermilfoil, an invasive species under Wisconsin law,” the statement reads. “Cultural resources on and near the shoreline also require ongoing protection.”

This isn’t the first time the tribe has been taken to federal court. 

Earlier this summer, a federal judge ruled that the Lac du Flambeau tribe must not enforce fishing restrictions for nonmembers during an ongoing legal challenge.

And last August, in another case, a federal judge ruled in favor of more than 50 homeowners and the town of Lac du Flambeau in a dispute with the tribe about access to roads crossing tribal lands.

The latest suit centers on the tribe’s power to enforce regulatory and judicial power over “nonmembers, their privately owned, nonmember fee land and Wisconsin’s navigable waterways.”

The suit says Fisher’s property is “within the exterior boundaries” of the tribe’s reservation, established in an 1854 treaty.  

But it argues that the treaty “does not grant the Band jurisdiction over the navigable waterways in the state of Wisconsin that are otherwise within the exterior borders of a reservation.”

According to court documents, the association wanted to construct a boat launch for its members after the tribe closed its boat launch indefinitely in 2024.

The association says it obtained all necessary permits from local governments and consulted with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Those government agencies said no further approvals were needed to construct the boat launch, court documents said.

The Lac du Flambeau Band issued citations during the construction of the boat launch, and eventually brought a civil case to tribal court, the suit states.

“The Band plainly lacks jurisdiction over the claims asserted in the Tribal Court,” the lawsuit reads. “Plaintiffs do not have an adequate opportunity to assert those claims in that Court. Tribal jurisdiction does not exist, and exhaustion is not required.”

The association and its members are asking the court to declare the tribe lacks regulatory jurisdiction over the private boat launch and issue injunctions preventing the tribe from pursuing claims against the association in tribal court.