NYS Thruway Involved in Federal Suit Brought by Cayuga Nation

Credit: JJBers via Flickr

The New York State Thruway has been under public and commercial scrutiny, as it finds itself the defendant in one lawsuit after another.

First built in the 1950s, the 570-mile highway system, stretches across the state to the borders of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut. The authority body that oversees its regulation, the New York State Thruway Authority, is currently embroiled in a total of sixty-one open litigations across the different court levels of the state, including the Court of Claims, as well as in the Northern and Western New York District U.S. Courts.

Notably, the Cayuga Nation, one of the original five members of the Haudenosaunee (also called the Iroquois Confederacy) filed a federal suit against the NYSTA on Dec. 11, 2023. One of their reasons for filing is for “continuing violations of federal law protecting the Nation’s 64,015-acre federally-recognized reservation in the Finger Lakes Region of New York (the “Reservation”).”

Finger Lakes Times noted in an article on the matter that Clint Halftown, the Nation’s federal representative, made the press in the area aware of these issues when they filed regarding the state’s violations of the Right-of-Way Act established by Congress in 1948. 

Congress’ Right-of-Way Act states that, for the state to use and operate on reservation land owned by an Indigenous nation, they must first obtain a grant of right-of-way by the U.S. Secretary of Interior if the tribe agrees to it. Article II of the act explicitly states, “No grant of a right-of-way over and across any lands belonging to a tribe organized under the [Indian Reorganization Act]...shall be made without the consent of the proper tribal officials.”

According to the Cayuga Nation, New York State failed to do so, and subsequently violated Article II of the Treaty of Canandaigua, which states, “The United States acknowledge[s] the lands reserved to the Oneida, Onondaga and Cayuga Nations, in their respective treaties with the state of [New York], and called their reservations, to be their property.”

Article II also notes that “the United States will never claim the same, nor disturb them or either of the Six Nations, nor their Indian friends residing thereon and united with them, in the free use and enjoyment thereof: but the said reservations shall remain theirs, until they choose to sell the same to the people of the United States, who have the right to purchase.”

The Nation is seeking three outcomes from this suit: that the NYSTA obtain a valid right-of-way for the stretch that is located on reservation land, that they are fairly paid compensation by the state for the NYSTA’s violation of the Nation’s federally-protected rights until a right-of-way is obtained and that the money being collected from the tolling on that two-mile stretch are handed over to them.

In addition to the Cayuga Nation, another federal suit was brought against the NYSTA back in 2018 filed by the neighboring Seneca Nation for a similar reason. Their complaint named the reason for the suit to be them “seeking to ‘enjoin New York State officers and the New York State Thruway Authority from continuing violations of federal law’ stemming from ‘an illegal easement on which a portion of the New York State Thruway, a toll road, is built.’” 

The state motioned for the case to be dismissed numerous times, but was denied each time.