Shinnecock leaders defying court order to halt electronic billboards on Sunrise Highway

Shinnecock Indian Nation leaders said they have no intention of obeying a court order issued this week that they immediately cease operating the tribe's electronic billboards on Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays.

In a ruling Nov. 24, state Supreme Court Justice Maureen Liccione partly granted a request by the State of New York and the Department of Transportation for contempt of court orders against tribal leaders and their outside contractors for defying several previous orders to stop operating and maintaining the 65-foot digital billboards. Liccione ordered the tribe’s commercial partners to pay fines of $250 and attorneys fees in the case, but stopped short of ordering fines for the Shinnecock leaders.

In messages and interviews Thursday, leaders for the Shinnecock Nation said they would not turn off the billboards.

"The signs will remain in operation," Lisa Goree, chairwoman of the Shinnecock Nation council of trustees, wrote in a Thanksgiving Day email to Newsday. "The lights will not go dark!"

Asked for comment, Joe Morrissey, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the agency "will have no comment on this matter." A spokesman for Gov. Kathy Hochul didn’t respond to a request for comment.

While granting most of the state's requests in the case, Liccione denied one asking that the nation and its partners provide the names of clients who’d advertised on the billboards, an apparent attempt by the state to hold advertisers liable in the case. (The state placed ads on the signs during the COVID-19 pandemic, Newsday has reported.)

The most recent ruling raises the stakes for the Shinnecock Nation in a half-decade of legal entanglements as it seeks to spark economic development on its 80-acre Westwoods property with the billboards, a travel plaza gas station and related initiatives. Court orders, most by Liccione, have halted construction of the gas station and now imposed fines on the billboard operations of the nation, where 20.7% of residents live below the poverty level, according to the most recent U.S. Census.

The billboard case was first brought by New York State and the transportation department in 2019 under former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, but Hochul’s administration has doubled down on it, seeking the contempt orders against Shinnecock Nation leaders whom it sued individually, including Goree, the tribe’s first woman chairwoman.

"Obviously we didn't turn off the signs before, and we're not going to turn off the signs now," said Lance Gumbs, vice chairman of the Shinnecock council of trustees who and, like Goree, is a named defendant in the state's case.

The state has argued the signs plans were not properly reviewed or approved, and present continuing safety hazards to motorists, findings Liccione's order mirrored. The tribe has argued it held numerous meetings with the state to present its plans, that the signs are properly designed and built, and have caused no accidents.

Gumbs noted the signs are 25 feet from the roadway. "There’s been not one safety issue" involving the billboards, said Gumbs. "We’ve clearly told state we would allow them to inspect the signs ... The safety of the signs was our paramount concern."

Liccione’s order said Shinnecock leaders and their contractors at IDON Media, Digital Outdoor Advertising and Iconic Outdoor Displays "shall immediately cease operations of the billboards and advertising displays." She pointed to numerous prior instances of the tribe defying state court and stop-work orders and cited the state Appellate Court's finding that the state's "safety concerns outweighed the [tribal] defendants' self-imposed risk of financial harm arising from the lack of advertising revenue from the billboards." 

Tribal leaders have publicly raised questions about the validity of a 1959 right-of-way pact by which the state operates a portion of Sunrise Highway through Westwoods, noting the contract includes the signature of a single purported tribal representative who signed it in Babylon, not the tribe’s Southampton reservation. Shinnecock leaders have said valid tribal contracts require three tribal-leader signatures, not just one, and note that Shinnecock Nation has never received any compensation for the state's use of tribal land, which divides the Westwood property to the direct north from a smaller parcel to the south of Sunrise Highway. They note that other tribes have received millions of dollars for such agreements.

"This has been a systemic pattern by the state and the town [of Southampton] to stifle the economic growth and sustainability of the Shinnecock Nation," Gumbs said. "What the town and the state are doing is literally trying to bankrupt the nation into submission. It's been a historical pattern." 

Jim Burke, attorney for Southampton Town, in an email cited federal law making it "the states' authority/responsibility to regulate the placement of signs/billboards along public highways" such as Sunrise Highway, adding the state "is subject to a reduction in Federal Highway funds if they do not appropriately regulate the placement of such signs."

He added, "I strongly also believe that the state has to be a significant party to any proposed settlement with the Westwoods property and the proposed travel plaza." 

Since the appellate court decision in December that led Liccione to order the signs cease operations that month, the Shinnecock Nation in January received letters from the U.S. Department of the Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs affirming that Westwoods is "restricted fee" land, which requires an act of Congress to alienate or encumber the property. The state never sought such an act, tribal leaders note. 

But Liccione has cited rulings that the BIA letter doesn’t trump the state’s regulatory authority or its easement rights because the restricted status "does not render Westwoods ‘Indian Country.’" She further wrote the letter "does not state that the Nation holds aboriginal title to Westwoods, and does not state that Westwoods is part of the Shinnecock reservation."

Suffolk County tax maps list Westwoods as "Shinnecock Indian Reservation," and the U.S. Department of the Interior letter appears to agree, after a three-year review by the agency prompted by a request from the Shinnecock Nation, leaders said.

"The Department examined the land title status of the Westwoods parcel and determined that it is within the Nation’s aboriginal territory, that the Nation has resided within its aboriginal territory since time immemorial and has never removed therefrom, and that Westwoods is within the purview of the Nonintercourse Act and is therefore restricted against alienation absent consent of the United States," according to the letter. "This land is and has always been restricted-fee land held by the Nation and is now recorded to reflect such status."

The Shinnecock Nation has argued its federally recognized status renders it immune from state and local zoning laws and judicial authority, an argument it has sought to apply to the gas station it also was in the process of building at Westwoods. Liccione has ordered construction to cease there, too, and the tribe has said the order has cost it upward of $22,000 a day in losses.

In June, the Shinnecock Nation filed suit in federal court in Central Islip against Southampton after the town issued cease-and-desist letters attempting to bar the tribe from using Westwoods for parking for a summer music festival. The lawsuit has a broader aim, Shinnecock member and attorney Tela Troge told Newsday: to "permanently enjoin the town from asserting any zoning for any reason at Westwoods."

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.