Washington (April 1, 2024) – Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released the following statement after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the petition to appeal a First Circuit panel’s upholding of the Secretary of the Interior’s 2021 decision to grant land trust rights to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.

“For too long the leadership and people of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe have suffered uncertainty and costly legal battles at the hands of the Trump administration’s unjust attempt to strip them of their ancestral homelands and land rights. We have been proud to join them in this fight, and we applaud today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to deny the petition for certiorari, affirming the status of their reservation once and for all.”

Senators Markey and Warren have long opposed the Trump administration's cruel efforts to disestablish the Tribe’s reservation and strip them of their ancestral homelands. After the Department of the Interior's attempt to disestablish the Tribe’s reservation in 2020, they issued a joint statement condemning the decision. The senators also joined a congressional amicus brief to protect the Tribe’s homelands, and the Court acknowledged the arguments made in the brief when issuing a ruling in favor of the Tribe. In 2021, Senators Markey and Warren applauded the Department of the Interior’s reaffirmation of the Tribe’s reservation. The senators also cosponsored legislation to provide a fix to the 2009 Supreme Court case Carcieri v. Salazar, so that tribal nations’ lands – like those of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe – can be taken into trust and protected.

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