President Donald Trump announced Brett Kavanaugh as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, July 9, 2018.
"Judge Kavanaugh has impeccable credentials," Trump said. "He is a brilliant jurist," the president added during the prime-time ceremony at the White House.
Kavanaugh has served on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals since 2006. The court hears a significant number of Indian law cases that arise out disputes between tribes and federal agencies.
In one pivotal case, Kavanaugh wrote the 2012 decision which eventually led to the Freedmen regaining citizenship in the Cherokee Nation.
The Freedmen are the descendants of former slaves held within tribal territory. They were brought to present-day Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears and their citizenship rights were spelled out in an 1866 treaty.
More recently, Kavanaugh wrote the 2017 decision which said the Navajo Nation could recover millions of dollars in tribal court funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA failed to act on the tribe's request in a timely manner, the ruling stated.
Photo of Freedmen protest outside the Bureau of Indian Affairs regional office in Muskogee, Oklahoma, courtesy of Marilyn Vann, the president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes.
