The Supreme Court appeared closely divided Monday over the Navajo Nation’s effort to keep alive a lawsuit seeking more water for a reservation in Arizona, as the tribe told the justices that the federal government had an obligation to provide access to water sources.
The Navajo Nation contends that an 1868 treaty promised both land and water sufficient for the Navajos to return to a permanent home in their ancestral territory. That wades into the contentious history of divvying up the dwindling flow of the Colorado River among the states in that river’s basin.
Shay Dvoretzky, an attorney for the tribe, told the justices Monday that the Navajo should be able to pursue a lawsuit to make the U.S. government live up to the treaty that Congress approved more than 150 years ago.
