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Twenty Indian tribes have no right to any of the $200 billion the tobacco industry agreed to pay under the landmark 1998 accord between cigarette makers and 46 states, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. 

A suit filed by the tribes in San Francisco in 1999 claimed that American Indians were counted for census data used to determine how the settlement money would be distributed in the states, but that the Indian nations were not given any payments. 

That amounted to racial discrimination and a breach of Indian sovereignty, according to the suit, which sought $1 billion in compensation and punitive damages from several tobacco companies. 

The case stemmed from a 1998 deal between the tobacco industry and 46 states in which the industry agreed to pay the states more than $200 billion. The payments, to recoup the states’ costs to treat ill smokers, were in exchange for the states dropping any legal claims against cigarette makers. 

The suit said Indians were left out of negotiations for the settlement, although U.S. territories were included. 

“It was an exclusion by the states and the tobacco industry,” said the tribes’ attorney, Joseph Russell.  

He said the decision was disappointing and would not say whether the Indians would seek a rehearing or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision. 

The 46 attorneys general and the tobacco companies did not include the Indians because they were not a party to the original suits against the industry that were settled under the agreement. 

“I’m sympathetic to them wanting to get a share of the revenue,” said Kristen Grainger of the Oregon attorney general’s office.  

“They couldn’t be included in a settlement. It only involved everybody who was a party to the lawsuits.” 

The suit also noted that tobacco companies raised their prices to fund the settlement, a hike Indian smokers have had to pay. 

But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Indians had no legal standing to sue the tobacco companies, because they have not “suffered injury” by being excluded. 

The panel said that the Indian tribes had not proven that they have paid to treat ill smokers. The court noted that the states, unlike the Indians, submitted legal claims to the tobacco companies that were rejected. 

The case is Table Bluff Reservation v. Philip Morris Inc., 00-15080. 

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On the Net: 

9th Circuit: http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/