Editor’s Note: See also Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska’s long-smoldering cigarette dispute with feds heats up and Federal agents swarm Wisconsin-based Ho-Chunk Inc. headquarters as part of tobacco investigation.
From: Sioux City Journal
A worker grabs cartons of Silver Cloud cigarettes to put into a case box at Rock River Manufacturing in this April 2017 file photo. HCI Distribution and Rock River, both subsidiaries of Ho-Chunk Inc., the Winnebago Tribe’s economic development arm, have sued the Nebraska attorney general and the state’s tax commissioner, claiming their efforts to regulate tribal tobacco are unconstitutional.
OMAHA — The state of Nebraska’s efforts to regulate the Winnebago Tribe’s production of tobacco products on its reservation are not only unconstitutional, a federal lawsuit says, but are an attack on the tribe’s sovereignty and an effort by large tobacco manufacturers to use state laws to “bootstrap” a federal tobacco settlement to Indian tribes.
HCI Distribution Inc. and Rock River Manufacturing Inc. — both subsidiaries of Ho-Chunk Inc., the Winnebago Tribe’s economic development arm — say tribal commercial activities are protected by federal law, and Nebraska has no regulatory authority over the tribe’s cigarette operations that take place on tribal land.
