Nooksack Tribal Judge Ray Dodge Accused of Harassing Domestic Abuse Victim

By Victoria McKenzie

Law360 (October 1, 2021, 10:44 PM EDT) -- The Ninth Circuit has been asked to decide whether the Nooksack Tribe has jurisdiction over a single mother who said an illegitimate tribal court judge persecuted her after she sought protection for domestic abuse, and then ordered her arrest on nonreservation land as part of a political vendetta.

In a reply brief filed Tuesday, two Nooksack tribal court judges accused 35-year-old Elile Adams of trying to "get even" with them after she was detained in Whatcom County, Washington, allegedly for failing to appear at a tribal criminal proceeding. Wrongful as her desire to "punish" the judges may be, they said, the district court was correct to find that Adams can't seek habeas relief in federal court without first exhausting tribal court remedies.

The district court also found that judicial immunity would apply whether or not the tribe had the jurisdiction to arrest Adams, and dismissed the case.

Adams' attorneys tell a very different story — that of a faction of "holdover" tribal leaders who sacked the chief tribal judge for her support of an election at a time when the tribe was divided over the proposed disenrollment of 300 citizens. The group then replaced her with their own attorney, Raymond D. Dodge, who is nonindigenous, according to the appeal.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced it would not recognize the group of council members, or any of their actions, according to the habeas writ Adams later filed in district court. The agency also invalidated any tribal court orders "based on actions taken by the tribal council after March 24, 2016," the petition states.

Nevertheless, Adams said Judge Dodge used his position to go after her because she and her father opposed the contentious plan to evict some 300 tribe members. Not long after being installed as chief judge, Adams said, Judge Dodge presided over an eviction action against an elder tribe member, whose lawyers he had "disbarred and excluded from court." Adams' father stood up for the elder in court, and in his native Nooksack language, publicly "humiliated" Judge Dodge for his unethical behavior, according to the writ.

The incident would later come back to haunt Adams when she appeared before Judge Dodge in 2017 to request a domestic violence protection order. According to Adams, Judge Dodge used his position to illegally assert jurisdiction over her child and initiate a custody action, threatening to take her daughter away, even though Adams had been awarded full custody in 2015 by a state Superior Court.

Then, Judge Dodge "took the unusual judicial step of personally asking Nooksack Tribal Police Chief Mike Ashby to investigate Ms. Adams for possible custodial interference," according to her appeal.

As part of a harassment campaign, Adams said Judge Dodge personally ordered "no less than twenty purported orders" against her between 2017 and 2019, many of them for contempt of court. As a result, Adams sought "asylum" for herself and her daughter with the neighboring Lummi Nation, and renounced her Nooksack citizenship. She appeared before Judge Dodge in 2019 and pled not guilty to criminal custodial interference, for allegedly violating the custody rights of the child's father — the man from whom Adams sought protection in 2017.

According to Gabriel Galanda of Galanda Broadman, who represents Adams in federal court, the father had not been seen since 2017 and had not made any appearance in court.

Then, while Adams was participating in an annual ritual called the Canoe Journey in 2019 — when all the tribal governments of the Northwest Treaty Tribes are shut down — Judge Dodge allegedly ordered Adams' arrest for failure to appear in court in relation to the criminal custodial action.

"On the morning of July 30, 2019, the Adamses were asleep or relaxing at home when tribal police officers arrived to the Adamses' home and assaulted, battered and falsely detained, arrested and/or imprisoned them," while refusing to identify themselves or present a warrant, the writ said. Her father was beaten, and his glasses broken, according to the petition.

After Adams' release on bail, Galanda filed twin habeas corpus petitions on her behalf in tribal and federal court, he told Law360. Judge Dodge refused to allow Galanda to represent Adams in the criminal custodial case, denying her "constitutional right to counsel," and also refusing to consider her pro se petition.

"They rejected her tribal habeas corpus petition because I signed it," Galanda said. "I then sought a writ of mandamus in front of the tribal court of appeals to compel the clerk to simply accept the habeas petition ... as a valid legal filing." But again, it was rejected.

Galanda finally had Adams refile her habeas petition pro se. "It was accepted for filing," he said, "but they've now sat on the filing since the fall of 2019."

The federal habeas petition named the Nooksack Tribe, several tribal court officers, Judge Dodge, and the pro tem judge who replaced him, Rajeev Majumdar, and invoked a bad-faith exemption to tribal court exhaustion.

Judge Dodge even sued Adams in Whatcom County Superior Court for libel after she told a blogger that "Judge Dodge has made my life a living nightmare," according to the federal habeas writ. He allegedly refused to recuse himself from her criminal case until October 2019.

According to Adams, Judge Dodge ordered her arrest "without due process, legal authority, or jurisdiction." Her case is the very "archetype for the bad-faith exception to exhaustion," she said, because the judge denied her access to counsel, denied her any means of contesting the criminal charges or her detention, and has "offered no legal or factual justification for the criminal sanctions against her."

In response to her Ninth Circuit appeal in 2021, the Nooksack Tribe and its tribal court judges rejected the accusations of bad faith or harassment. On Tuesday, the judges said that Adams "deceptively omitted" the fact that in 2017, the DOI restored its recognition of the tribal government after the tribe carried out a special election, which the DOI determined to be legitimate.

According to the tribe's reply brief, the Washington Supreme Court has repeatedly held that "its criminal jurisdiction is concurrent with tribes concerning offenses occurring on off-reservation trust lands," saying that Adams' protestations "are simply evidence of her disdain for the tribe."

Adams argued that Public Law 280 established Washington's exclusive criminal jurisdiction over off-reservation allotted land.

Galanda said Adams has already suffered "the ultimate consequence" by relinquishing her tribal enrollment. "I can't describe that for you — it doesn't translate," said Galanda, himself a Round Valley tribal citizen. "But imagine yourself as a natural-born American citizen, if that's who you are, fleeing to Canada to escape persecution of a judge."

Counsel for the Nooksack Tribe and for Judge Dodge declined to comment.

Judges Dodge and Majumdar are represented by Rachel B. Saimons and Rob Roy Smith of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP.

The Nooksack Tribe is represented by Charles Norman Hurt of the Office of Tribal Attorney.

Adams is represented by Gabriel Galanda of Galanda Broadman PLLC.

The case is Elile Adams v. Raymond Dodge et al., case number 21-35490, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

--Editing by Jay Jackson Jr.