A U.S. District Court judge ruled Wednesday in favor of Cherokee Freedmen descendants, saying they have a right to tribal citizenship a decade after Cherokee Nation rescinded those rights.

Judge Thomas F. Hogan, with the District of Columbia court, upheld an 1886 treaty between the Oklahoma Cherokee Nation and the U.S. that stated all African-American slaves who were taken as property by the tribe would become citizens of that tribe.

The tribe eventually amended its rules and required that citizens be directly descended from an ancestor listed on the “Cherokee By Blood” section of the Dawes Rolls, a list of individuals who were deemed eligible for tribal membership by a federal commission in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

That move essentially stripped descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen of their right to citizenship.

In the judge’s decision, he wrote: “The Court finds it confounding that the Cherokee Nation historically had no qualms about regarding Freedmen as Cherokee ‘property’ yet continues, even after 150 years, to balk when confronted with the legal imperative to treat them as people.”

The Cherokee Supreme Court ruled in favor of the descendants in 2006, when it found the Freedmen were unconstitutionally prevented from enrolling as citizens. But in 2007, a CN special election was held, and voters rescinded the citizenship of Freedmen descendants.

Since then, Freedmen descendants have pursued citizenship rights through several legal proceedings in U.S. and tribal courts.

In 2014, the U.S. Department of Interior filed a motion for summary judgment, asking the U.S. District Court to rule in favor of the Freedmen. 

Hogan determined this week that the Treaty of 1886 guarantees descendants of Cherokee Freedmen have all the rights of native Cherokees, including the right to citizenship.

CN Attorney General Todd Hembree said Wednesday evening that he and his staff are still digesting Hogan’s decision, but expects to formulate a legal action for the tribe “in the very near future.”

“There’s nothing final in this case at this point,” Hembree said.

Crawford writes for the Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Daily Press.