Citing Cherokee v. Leavitt, the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals said recently that the Indian Health Service was justified in denying the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe’s claim for more money to cover services it was providing at its clinic under a 638 contract with the agency.
In this complex case (Fort Mojave Indian Tribe v. Department of Health and Human Services, CBCA 547-ISDA), the tribe charged that the IHS acted unlawfully by refusing to pay the tribe the full amount that the agency would have spent to provide services for the tribe’s service community, as required by section 106(a)(1) of the Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDEAA). Specifically, the tribe said that (1) the IHS refused to pay for patients it served from nearby communities, (2) for the tribe’s full share of the service unit’s funding unlawfully designated by the IHS as “contractible but not divisible funding” and (3) for the full share of the service unit’s “historical funding.”
The agency contends that the tribe entered into a contract with the agency for specified services to be provided for a specified amount (emphasis added). The agency paid at least the amount requested in the contract and the tribe provided the services specified “and no other services” in exchange for the payments. “Therefore the contract has been fulfilled.”
The board sided with the IHS, noting that in Cherokee v. Leavitt – a 2005 case that centered on whether the IHS had provided full contract support costs in light of limited appropriations – the Supreme Court said that an ISDEAA contract between a tribe and a government agency was the same as any other procurement contract. “There can be no more straightforward application of this principal than to this situation: where an offer and acceptance were freely made, an agreement was entered into, and each party has fulfilled its promise, nothing remains to dispute,” the board wrote.
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