Ranching family asks Supreme Court to secure access to court in property dispute

The Blakeys have raised cattle on the banks of Washington’s North Fork Stillaguamish River since 1990, when the family bought and began running Flying T Ranch. The family business became a mother-daughter operation led by Tammy and her daughter Alexis when her husband passed away.

The ownership of two small strips of grazing land on the periphery of the family’s property has been the subject of debate for decades, with Flying T Ranch, Snohomish County, and the Stillaguamish Tribe all claiming ownership over the years. The dispute was primarily an issue on paper, doing little to affect the ranch’s daily operations. For over three decades, the Blakeys continued to use and steward the land, grazing cattle, maintaining fences, and making other improvements on the disputed parcels.

In 2022, the Blakeys asked a Washington state court to formally grant them ownership of the land through a process known as a “quiet title action,” a longstanding method for resolving property disputes. The Blakeys’ action asked the court to determine if the Ranch, the County, or the Tribe owned the strips. The family expected the court to consider the history of the dispute, land ownership records, and the actions they had taken to preserve the property.

Instead, the court dismissed the Blakeys’ case altogether. The court held that the Tribe had sovereign immunity and could not be sued in quiet title lawsuits, even if the disputed land had never previously been part of a reservation, like the grazing strips in Flying T Ranch.

The Blakeys, like all American citizens, have a right to access the courts to resolve property disputes. They filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case. The petition asks the Court to overturn the lower court decision holding that tribal governments have absolute immunity to quiet title actions, thereby barring the Blakeys from resolving their property dispute in court.