Editor’s Note: See also Appeals court rules against Winnebago tribal corporation in tobacco case and Winnebago Tribe fights back in court after ‘attack on sovereignty’.
From: Sioux City Journal
A worker grabs cartons of Silver Cloud cigarettes to put into a case box at Rock River Manufacturing in April 2017. A federal judge has denied a federal government’s request to stay proceedings in a lawsuit filed by HCI Distribution and Rock River, both subsidiaries of Ho-Chunk Inc., the Winnebago Tribe’s economic development arm, against Nebraska officials, claiming their efforts to regulate tribal tobacco are unconstitutional.
OMAHA — A federal judge has denied a U.S. government request to freeze proceedings in a lawsuit in which tribal tobacco companies in Winnebago claim Nebraska state officials’ attempts to regulate their cigarette sales are unconstitutional.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Bazis last week ruled that U.S. attorneys failed to show that the civil lawsuit would affect an ongoing federal criminal investigation into HCI Distribution Inc. and Rock River Manufacturing Inc. She denied the government’s request to allow U.S. attorneys to intervene in the case and stay proceedings.
