WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday it won’t hear appeals from two Maine Indian tribes that argued they have sovereign powers over their tribal government affairs.

The cases involved the Aroostook Band of Micmacs and the Houlton Band of Maliseets, both of which claimed they weren’t subject to Maine’s Human Rights Act.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuk ruled two years ago that the Micmacs, a tribe of about 1,000 members based in Presque Isle, weren’t subject to state employment laws or the Maine Human Rights Act in a lawsuit stemming from the tribe’s 2001 firing of three Aroostook County women. The women complained to the Maine Human Rights Commission that their terminations violated the Maine Whistleblower Protection Act.

That ruling was overturned last spring by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston in a split decision. The tribe then appealed to the Supreme Court.

The tribe had argued that there was nothing in a 1980 land claims settlement with the state or subsequent state laws that deprived the tribe of its sovereign rights, Douglas Luckerman, the Lexington, Mass., attorney who represents both tribes, said Monday.

The Micmacs were federally recognized as a tribe in 1991.

The state argued and the appellate court agreed that the 1980 settlement applied to all tribes, regardless of when they were given recognition. Therefore, the tribes are subject to state laws, the court said.

“This is a sad day. It’s a tragic day,” Luckerman, said Monday. “Not one word in any document, in any memo, in any letter, in any piece of legislative history that I’ve seen, that anybody has produced in any court anywhere, does it say that Congress intended for the Micmacs and the Houlton band not to have their own authority over their own members and their own land.

“That’s all the tribes have ever argued,” he continued. “The fact that the state has some authority over land should not have disrupted that authority. The fact that court found that it did – it’s just wrong morally; wrong for what the tribes have had to endure, for what they’ve been through.”

The tribe sued the commission, its executive director and commissioners, and the three former employees in U.S. District Court in Bangor in February 2003. Over the next year, the commission found favorable grounds for the fired employees’ claims.

Matthew Keegan, the Augusta attorney who represents two of the women, said earlier this year that his clients and their claims have been lost in the sovereignty argument over the nearly five years the case has been in federal court. The women’s discrimination lawsuit in state court has been stayed pending the outcome of the federal case.

The Maliseets’ case also involved the MHRA. In that case, the tribe lost at the federal court and appeals court before appealing to the Supreme Court.

That case began when a former licensed practical nurse, who worked at the band’s health clinic, filed a complaint with the commission over her termination.

Both cases will be sent back to federal court in Bangor for further proceedings before Kravchuk and U.S. District Judge John Woodcock.