In a current choice by the Fourth Circuit, Big Picture Loans, LLC, an on-line loan provider owned and operated by the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized Indian tribe (“Tribe”), and Ascension Technologies, LLC, the Tribe’s management and consultant company effectively established they are each hands for the Tribe and cloaked with all the privileges and immunities for the Tribe, including sovereign resistance. As back ground, Big Picture Loans and Ascension are two entities formed under Tribal legislation by the Tribe and both are wholly owned and operated by the Tribe. Big Picture Loans provides customer financial services products online and Ascension provides marketing and technology solutions solely to picture that is big.
Plaintiffs, customers who’d applied for loans from Big photo Loans, brought a class that is putative within the Eastern District of Virginia, arguing that state legislation along with other various claims put on Big Picture Loans and Ascension. Big Picture Loans and Ascension relocated to dismiss the outcome for not enough subject material jurisdiction in the basis that they’re eligible to sovereign resistance as hands for the Tribe.