Today the Supreme Court held that the sovereign immunity of Indian tribes does not extend to suits against tribal employees when the employee, instead of the tribe, is the “real party in interest.”

Lewis v. Clarke involved a run-of-the-mill car accident: The plaintiffs, Brian and Michelle Lewis, citizens of Connecticut, were driving on an interstate highway outside the boundaries of the Mohegan Reservation when they were rear-ended by the defendant, William Clarke, also a citizen of Connecticut. Clarke was an employee of the Mohegan Tribe, however, and the accident occurred while he was driving customers to the tribe’s casino.

The Lewises sued Clarke in Connecticut state court for damages resulting from the accident. Clarke moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that he was cloaked in the tribe’s sovereign immunity because he was acting as a tribal employee or, in the alternative, because the tribe had agreed to indemnify him for any damages arising from his official acts in furtherance of the tribe’s interests.

The Connecticut trial court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss the suit on the ground that the remedy the plaintiffs sought — money damages from Clarke — did not, as today’s opinion put it, “affect the Tribe’s ability to govern itself independently.” The Supreme Court of Connecticut reversed, holding that permitting a plaintiff to overcome tribal immunity simply by styling his complaint as against the defendant in an individual capacity would render tribal immunity a nullity.

A unanimous Supreme Court reversed, in an opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

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